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'1 

THE 

SPEECHES 

OF 

CHARLES PHILLIPS, Esq. 

DELIVERED 

AT THE BAR, 

AND 

ON VARIOUS PUBLIC OCCASIONS, 

IN 

IRELAND AND ENGLAND. 



EDITED BY HIMSELF. 



LONDON: 

PRINTED FOR LONGMAN, HURST, REES, ORME, AND BROWN. 
PATERNOSTER-ROW. 

1817. 






L L 
MAY 18 1942 



Printed by A. Strahanj 
Printers-Street, London, 



THE 



FOLLOWING SPEECHES 



ARE, BY PERMISSION, 



DEDICATED TO 



WILLIAM ROSCOE, 



WITH 



THE MOST SINCERE RESPECT 



AND AFFECTION 



OF THEIR 



AUTHOR. 



a 2 



PREFACE. 

(BY JOHN FINLAYj ESQ,.) 



HHHE Speeches of Phillips are now, for the first 
time, offered to the world in an authentic 
form. So far as his exertions have been hitherto 
developed, his admirers, and they are innumerable, 
must admit, that the text of this volume is an 
acknowledged reference, to which future criticism 
may fairly resort, and from which his friends must 
deduce any title which the speaker may have 
created to the character of an orator. 

The interests of his reputation impose no neces- 
sity of denying many of those imperfections which 
have been imputed to these productions. The 
value of all human exertion is comparative ; 
and positive excellence is but a nattering designa- 
tion, even of the best products of industry and 
mind. 

There is, perhaps, but one way by which we 
could avoid all possible defects, and that is, by 
avoiding all possible exertion. The very fastidious, 
a 3 



VI PREFACE. 

and the very uncharitable, may too often be met 
with in the class of the indolent ; and the man 
of talent is generally most liberal in his censure, 
whose industry has given him least title to praise. 
Thus defects and detraction are as the spots and 
shadow which of necessity adhere and attach to 
every object of honourable toil. Were it possi- 
ble for the friends of Mr. Phillips to select those 
defects which could fill up the measure of unavoid- 
able imperfection, and at the same time inflict 
least injury on his reputation, doubtless they would 
prefer the blemishes and errors natural to youth, 
consonant to genius, and consistent with an obvious 
and ready correction. To this description, we 
apprehend, may be reduced all the errors that 
have been imputed through a system of wide- 
spread and unwearied criticism, animated by that 
envy with which indolence too oft regards the suc- 
cess of industry and talent, and subsidised by 
power in its struggle to repress the reputation and 
importance of a rapidly rising young man, whom 
it had such good reason both to hate and fear. 
For it would be ignorance not to know, and 
knowing, it would be affectation to conceal, that 
his political principles were a drawback on his re- 
putation ; and that the dispraise of these speeches 
has been a discountable quantity for the promotion 
of placemen and the procurement of place, 



PREFACE. Ml 

This system of depreciation thus powerfully 
wielded, even to the date of the present publica- 
tion, failed not in its energy, though it has in its 
object ; nay more, it has succeeded in procuring 
for him the beneficial results of a multiplying re- 
action. To borrow the expression of an eminent 
classic, " the rays of their indignation collected 
upon him, served to illumine, but could not con- 
sume ;" and doubtless, this hostility may have 
promoted this fact, that the materials of this 
volume are at this moment read in all the lan- 
guages of Europe ; and whatever be the proportion 
of their merits to their faults, they are unlikely to 
escape the attention of posterity. 

The independent reader, whom this book may 
introduce to a first or more correct acquaintance 
with his eloquence, will therefore be disposed to 
protect his mind against these illiberal preposses- 
sions thus actively diffused, on the double consider- 
ation that some defects are essential to such and 
so much labour, and that some detraction may 
justly be accounted for by the motives of the sys- 
tem whose vices he exposed. The same reader, 
if he had not the opportunity of hearing these 
speeches delivered by the author, will make in his 
favour another deduction for a different reason. 

The great father of ancient eloquence was ac- 
customed to say, that action was the first,- and 
a 4 



Vlll PREFACE. 

second, and last quality of an orator. This was 
the dictum of a supreme authority; it was an 
exaggeration notwithstanding ; but the observ- 
ation must contain much truth to permit such ex- 
aggeration; and whilst we allow that delivery is not 
every thing, it will be allowed that it is much of 
the effect of oratory. 

Nature has been bountiful to the subject of these 
remarks in the useful accident of a prepossessing 
exterior ; an interesting figure, an animated coun- 
tenance, and a demeanour devoid of affectation, 
and distinguished by a modest self-possession, give 
him the favourable opinion of his audience, even 
before he has addressed them. His eager, lively, 
and sparkling eye melts or kindles in pathos or 
indignation ; his voice, by its compass, sweetness, 
and variety, ever audible and seldom loud, never 
hurried, inarticulate, or indistinct, secures to his 
audience every word that he utters, and preserves 
him from the painful appearance of effort. 

His memory is not less faithful in the convey- 
ance of his meaning, than his voice : unlike Fox 
in this respect, he never wants a word; unlike 
Burke, he never pretends to want one ; and unlike 
Grattan, he never either wants or recals one. 

His delivery is freed from every thing fantastic— 
is simple and elegant, impressive and sincere ; and 
if we add the circumstance of his youth to his 



PREFACE. IX 

other external qualifications, none of his contempo- 
raries in this vocation can pretend to an equal 
combination of these accidental advantages. 

If, then, action be a great part of the effect of 
oratory, the reader who has not heard him is ex- 
cluded from that consideration, so important to a 
right opinion, and on which his excellence is un- 
questioned. 

The ablest and severest of all the critics who 
have assailed him, (we allude, of course, to the 
Edinburgh Review,) in their criticism on Guthrie 
and Sterne, have paid him an involuntary and 
unprecedented compliment. He is the only in- 
dividual in these countries to whom this literary 
work has devoted an entire article on a single 
speech ; and when it is recollected that the basis 
of this criticism was an unauthorised and in- 
correct publication of a single forensic exertion 
in the ordinary routine of professional business, 
it is very questionable whether such a publication 
afforded a just and proportionate ground-work for 
so much general criticikn, or a fair criterion of 
the alleged speaker's general merits. This criti- 
cism sums iip its objections, and concludes its 
remarks, by the following commending observation, 
— that a more strict control over his fancy would 
constitute a remedy for his defects. 

Exuberance of fancy is certainly a defect, but it 
is evidence of an attribute essential to an orator. 



X PREFACE. 

There are few men without some judgment, but 
there are many men without any imagination : the 
latter class never did, and never can produce an 
orator. Without imagination, the speaker sinks to 
the mere dry arguer, the matter-of-fact man, the 
calculator, or syllogist, or sophist; the dealer in 
figures; the compiler of facts; the mason, but not 
the architect of the pile : for the dictate of the 
imagination is the inspiration of oratory, which 
imparts to matter animation and soul. 

Oratory is the great art of persuasion ; its pur- 
pose is to give, in a particular instance, a certain 
direction to human action. The faculties of the 
orator are judgment and imagination ; and reason 
and eloquence, the product of these faculties, must 
-work on the judgment and feelings of his audience 
for the attainment of his end. The speaker who 
addresses the judgment alone may be argumenta- 
tive, but never can be eloquent; for argument 
instructs without interesting, and eloquence in- 
terests without convincing: but oratory is neither; 
it is the compound of bUJi; it conjoins the feelings 
^and opinions of men ; it speaks to the passions 
through the mind, and to the mind through the 
passions ; and leads its audience to its just purpose 
by the combined and powerful agency of human 
reason and human feeling. The components of 
this combination will vary, of course, in proportion 
to the number and sagacity of the auditory which 



PRE; *1 

the speaker addresses. With judges it is to be 
hoped that the passions will be weak : with public 
assemblies it is to be hoped that reasoning will be 
strong ; but although the imagination may, in the 
first case, be unemployed, in the second it cannot 
be dispensed with ; for if the advocate of virtue 
avoids to address the feelings of a mixed assembly, 
whether it be a jury or a political meeting, he has 
no security that their feeling, and their bad feelings, 
may not be brought into action against him : he 
surrenders to his enemy the strongest of his wea- 
pons, and by a species of irrational generosity con- 
trives to insure his own defeat in the conflict. To 
juries and public assemblies alone the following 
speeches have been addressed; and it is by ascer- 
taining their effect on these assemblies or juries, 
that the merit of the exertion should in justice be 
measured. 

But there seems a general and prevalent mis- 
take among our critics on this judgment. They 
seem to think that the taste of the individual is 
the standard by which the value of oratory should 
be decided. We do not consider oratory a mere 
matter of taste : it is a given means for the pro- 
curement of a given end ; and the fitness of its 
means to the attainment of its end should be in 
chief the measure of its merit — of this fitness suc- 
cess ought to be evidence. The preacher who 



XU PREFACE. 

can melt his congregation into tears, and excel 
others in his struggle to convert the superfluities 
of the opulent into a treasury for the wretched ; — 
the advocate who procures the largest compensa- 
tion from juries on their oaths, for injuries which 
they try; — the man who, like Mr. Phillips, can be 
accused (if ever any man was so accused, except 
himself) by grave lawyers, and before grave 
judges, of having procured a verdict from twelve 
sagacious and most respectable special jurors by 
fascination ; of having, by the fascination of his 
eloquence, blinded them to that duty which they 
were sworn to observe : — the man who can be ac- 
cused of this on oath, and the fascination of whose 
speaking is made a ground-work, though an un- 
successful one, for setting aside a verdict; — he 
may be wrong and ignorant in his study and prac- 
tice of oratory ; but, with all his errors and igno- 
rance, it must be admitted, that he has in some 
manner stumbled on the shortest way for attaining 
the end of oratory — that is, giving the most force- 
ful direction to human action and determination 
in particular instances. His eloquence may be a 
novelty, but it is beyond example successful ; and 
its success and novelty may be another explanation 
for the hostility that assails. It may be matter of 
taste, but it certainly would not be matter of 
judgment or prudence in Mr. Phillips to depart 



PREFACE. Xlll 

from a course which has proved most successful, 
and which has procured for him, within the last 
year, a larger number of readers through the 
world than ever in the same time resorted to the 
productions of any man of these countries. His 
youth carries with it not only much excuse, but 
much promise of future improvement; and doubt- 
less he will not neglect to apply the fruits of study 
and the lights of experience to each succeeding 
exertion. But his manner is his own, and every 
man's own manner is his best manner; and so long 
as it works with this unexampled success, he 
should be slow to adopt the suggestions of his ene- 
mies, although he should be sedulous in adopting 
all legitimate improvement. To that very exube- 
rance of imagination, we do not hesitate to as- 
cribe much of his success; whilst, therefore, he 
consents to control it, let him be careful lest he 
clips his wings : nor is the strength of this faculty 
an argument, although it has been made an argu- 
ment, against the strength of his reasoning powers ; 
for let us strip these Speeches of every thing 
whose derivation could be, by any construction, 
assigned to his fancy ; let us apply this rule to his 
judicial and political^ exertions — fdr instance, to 
the speech on Guthrie and Sterne, and the late 
one to the gentlemen of Liverpool — let their 
topics be translated into plain, dull language, and 



XIV PREFACE. 

then we would ask, what collection of topics could 
be more judicious, better arranged, or classed 
in a more lucid and consecutive order by the 
most tiresome wisdom of the sagest arguer at the 
bar ? Is there not abundance to satisfy the judg- 
ment, even if there were nothing to sway the feel- 
ings, or gratify the imagination ? How preposter- 
ous, then, the futile endeavour to undervalue the 
solidity of the ground-work, by withdrawing atten- 
tion to the beauty of the ornament ; or to maintain 
the deficiency of strength in the base, merely because 
there appears so much splendour in the structure. 

Unaided by the advantages of fortune or al- 
liance, under the frown of political power and the 
interested detraction of professional jealousy, con- 
fining the exercise of that talent which he derives 
from his God to the honour, and succour, and pro- 
tection of his creatures — this interesting and 
highly-gifted young man runs his course like a 
giant, prospering and to prosper ; — an the court as a 
flaming sword, leading and lighting the injured to 
their own ; and in the public assembly exposing 
her wrongs — exacting her rights—conquering 
envy — trampling on corruption— beloved by his 
country— -esteemed by a world-— enjoying and de- 
serving an unexampled fame— and actively employ- 
ing the summer of his life in gathering honours for 
his name, and garlands for his grave ! 

7 



CONTENTS. 



Page 
SPEECH delivered at a Public Dinner given to 
Mr. Finiay by the Roman Catholics of the Town 
and County of Sligo I 

Speech delivered at an Aggregate Meeting of the 
Roman Catholics of Cork 19 

Speech delivered r at a Dinner given on Dinas Island, 
in the Lake of Killarney, on Mr. Phillips's Health 
being given, together with that of Mr. Payne, a 
young American 37 

Speech delivered at an Aggregate Meeting of the 
Roman Catholics of the County and City of Dublin. 44 

Petition referred to in the preceding Speech, drawn 
by Mr. Phillips at the request of the Roman 
Catholics of Ireland 70 

The Address to H. R. H. the Princess of Wales, 
drawn by Mr. Phillips at the request of the Roman 
Catholics of Ireland 73 

Speech delivered by Mr. Phillips at a Public Dinner 
given to him by the Friends of Civil and Religious 
Liberty in Liverpool , ., 75 

* a8 



XVI CONTEXTS. 

Page 
Speech of Mr. Phillips in the case of Guthrie v. Sterne, 
delivered in the Court of Common Pleas, Dublin ... 90 

Speech of Mr. Phillips in the case of O'Mullan v. 
M'Korkill, delivered in the County Court-house, 
Galway 117 

Speech in the case of Connaghton v. Dillon, delivered 
in the County Court-house of Roscommon 144 

Speech of Mr. Phillips in the case of Creighton v. 
Townsend, delivered in the Court of Common 
Pleas, Dublin , 161 

Speech in the case of Blake v. Wilkins, delivered in 
the County Court-house, Galway 179 

A Character of Napoleon Buonaparte, down to the 
Period of his Exile to Elba 20fJ 



A 

SPEECH 

DELIVERED AT A PUBLIC DINNER GIVEN* TO 

MR. FINLAY 

BY 

THE ROMAN CATHOLICS 

OF THE TOWN* AND COUNTY OF 

SLIGO. 



[" THINK, Sir, you will agree with me, that the 

most experienced speaker might justly tremble 

in addressing you after the display you have just 

witnessed. What, then, must I feel who never 
before addressed a public audience ? However, it 
would be but an unworthy affectation in me were 
I to conceal from you the emotions with which I 
am agitated by this kindness. The exaggerated 
estimate which other counties have made of the 
few services so young a man could render, has, I 
hope, inspired me with the sentiments it ought ; 
but here, I do confess to you, I feel no ordinary 
sensation — here, where every object springs some 
new association, and the loveliest objects, mel- 
lowed as they are by time, rise painted on the eye 

B 



SPEECH 



of memory — here, where the light of heaven first 
blessed my infant view, and nature breathed into 
my infant heart that ardour for my country which 
nothing but death can chill — here, where the 
scenes of my childhood remind me, how innocent 
I was, and the grave of my fathers admonish me, 
how pure I should continue — here, standing as I 
do amongst my fairest, fondest, earliest sympa- 
thies, — such a welcome, operating, not merely as 
an affectionate tribute, but as a moral testimony, 
does indeed quite oppress and overwhelm me. 
Oh ! believe me, warm is the heart that feels, and 
willing is the tongue that speaks ; and still, I can- 
not, by shaping it to my rudely inexpressive phrase, 
shock the sensibility of a gratitude too full to be 
suppressed, and yet (how far !) too eloquent for 
language. 

If any circumstance could add to the pleasure 
of this day, it is that which I feel in introducing 
to the friends of my youth the friend of my adop- 
tion, though perhaps I am committing one of our 
imputed blunders when I speak of introducing 
one whose patriotism has already rendered him 
familiar to every heart in Ireland; a man, who, 
conquering every disadvantage, and spurning every 
difficulty, has poured around our misfortunes the 
splendour of an intellect that at once irradiates 
and consumes them. For the services he has ren- 
dered to his country, from my heart I thank hi#n, 
and, for myself, I offer him a personal, it may be 
a selfish, tribute for saving me, by his presence 
thi£ night, from an impotent attempt at his pane- 



AT SLIGO. S 

gyric. Indeed, gentlemen, you can have 1 little 
idea of what he has to endure, who, in these times, 
advocates your cause. Every calumny which the 
venal, and the vulgar, and the vile, are lavishing 
upon you is visited with exaggeration upon us. 
We are called traitors, because we would rally 
round the crown an unanimous people. We are 
called apostates, because we will not persecute 
Christianity. We are branded as separatists, be- 
cause of our endeavours to annihilate the fetters 
that, instead of binding, clog the connection. To 
these may be added, the frowns of power, the 
envy of dulness, the mean malice of exposed self- 
interest, and, it may be, in despite of all natural 
affection, even the discountenance of kindred ! 
Well, be it so,— 

For thee, fair freedom, welcome all the past, 
For thee, my country, welcome even the last ! 

I am not ashamed to confess to you, that there 
was a day, when I was as bigotted as the blackest ; 
but I thank the Being who gifted me with a mind 
not quite impervious to conviction, and I thank 
you, who afforded such convincing testimonies of 
my error. I saw you enduring with patience the 
most unmerited assaults, bowing before the insults 
of revived anniversaries ; in private life, exem- 
plary ; in public, unoffending ; in the hour of 
peace, asserting your loyalty ; in the hour of dan- 
ger, proving it. Even when an invading enemy 
victoriously penetrated into the very heart of our 
county, I yaw the banner of your allegiance beam- 
is °Z 



4 SPEECH 

ing refutation on your slanderers ; was it a wonder, 
then, that I seized my prejudices, and with a blush 
burned them on the altar of my country ! 

The great question of Catholic, shall I not 
rather say, of Irish emancipation, has now assumed 
that national aspect which imperiously challenges 
the scrutiny of every one. While it was shrouded 
in the mantle of religious mystery, with the temple 
for its sanctuary, and the pontiff for its sentinel, 
the vulgar eye might shrink and the vulgar spirit 
shudder. But now it has come forth, visible 
and tangible, for the inspection of the laity ; and 
I solemnly protest, dressed as it has been in the 
double haberdashery of the English minister -and 
the Italian prelate, I know not whether to laugh 
at its appearance, or to loathe its pretentions — to 
shudder at the deformity of its original creation, 
or smile at the grotesqueness of its foreign deco- 
rations. Only just admire this far-famed security 
bill, — this motley compound of oaths and penal- 
ties, which, under the name of emancipation, would 
drag your prelates with an halter about their necks 
to the vulgar scrutiny of every village-tyrant, in 
order to enrich a few political traders, and distil 
through some state alembic the miserable rinsings 
of an ignorant, a decaying, and degenerate aris- 
tocracy ! Only just admire it ! Originally engen- 
dered by oux friends the opposition, with a cuckoo 
insidiousness, they swindled it into the nest of the 
treasury ravens, and when it had been fairly hatch- 
ed with the beak of the one, and the nakedness of 
the other, they sent it for its feathers to Mon- 



AT SLIGO. 5 

seigneur Quarantotti, wlio has obligingly trans- 
mitted it with the hunger of its parent, the rapa- 
city of its nurse, and the coxcombry of its plumas- 
siei% to be baptized by the bishops, and received 
a?quo gratoque animo by the people of Ireland!! 
Oh, thou sublimely ridiculous Quarantotti ! Oh, 
thou superlative coxcomb of the conclave ! what 
an estimate hast thou formed of the mind of 
Ireland ! Yet why should I blame this wretched 
scribe of the Propaganda ! He had every right to 
speculate as he did ; all the chances of the calcu- 
lation were in his favour. Uncommon must be 
the people aver whom centuries of oppression have 
revolved in vain ! Strange must be the mind 
which is not subdued by suffering ! sublime the 
spirit which is not debased by servitude ! God, 
I give thee thanks! — he knew not Ireland. Bent 
— broken — manacled as she has been, she will 
not bow to the mandate of an Italian slave, 
transmitted through an English vicar. For my 
own part, as an Irish Protestant, I trample to the 
earth this audacious and desperate experiment of 
authority; and for you, as Catholics, the time is 
come to give that calumny the lie which represents 
you as subservient to a foreign influence. That in- 
fluence, indeed, seems not quite so unbending as it 
suited the purposes of bigotry to represent it, and 
appears now not to have conceded more, only be- 
cause more was not demanded. The theology of 
the question is not for me to argue ; it cannot be 
in better hands than in those of your bishops ; and 
I can have no doubt that when they bring their 
b 3 



6 SPEECH 

rank, their learning, their talents, their piety, and 
their patriotism to this sublime deliberation, they 
will consult the dignity of that venerable fabric 
which has stood for ages, splendid and immutable; 
which time could not crumble, nor persecutions 
shake, nor revolutions change ; which has stood 
amongst us like some stupendous and majestic 
Appenine, the earth rocking at its feet, and the 
heavens roaring round its head, firmly balanced on 
the base of its eternity ; the relic of what was ; 
the solemn and sublime memento of what must 
be! 

Is this my opinion as a professed member of the 
church of England ? Undoubtedly it is. As an 
Irishman, I feel my liberties interwoven, and the 
best affections of my heart as it were enjibred with 
those of my Catholic countrymen ; and as a Pro- 
testant, convinced of the purity of my own faith, 
would I not debase it by postponing the powers of 
reason to the suspicious instrumentality of this 
world's conversion? No; surrendering as I do, with 
a proud contempt, all the degrading advantages with 
which an ecclesiastical usurpation would invest 
me ; so I will not interfere with a blasphemous in- 
trusion between any man and his Maker. I hold 
it a criminal and accursed sacrilege, to rob even a 
beggar of a single motive for his devotion; and I 
hold it an equal insult to my own faith, to offer me 
any boon for its profession. This pretended eman- 
cipation-bill passing into a law, would, in my mind, 
strike a blow not at this sect or at that sect, but 
at the very vitality of Christianity itself. I am 



AT SLICO. , 

thoroughly convinced that the anti-Christian con- 
nection between church and state, which it wa\ 
suited to increase, has done more mischief to the 
Gospel interests, than all the ravings of infidelity 
since the crucifixion. The sublime Creator of our 
blessed creed never meant it to be the channel of 
a courtly influence, or the source of a corrupt as- 
cendancy. He sent it amongst us to heal, not to 
irritate ; to associate, not to seclude ; to collect 
together, like the baptismal dove, every creed and 
clime and colour in the universe, beneath the spot- 
less wing of its protection. The union of church 
and state only converts good Christians into bad 
statesmen, andpolitical knaves into pretended Chris- 
tians. It is at best but a foul and adulterous con- 
nection, polluting the purity of heaven with the 
abominations of earth, and hanging the tatters of 
a political piety upon the cross of an insulted 
Saviour. Religion, Holy Religion, ought not, 
in the words of its Founder, to be " led into tempt- 
ation." The hand that holds her chalice should 
be pure, and the priests of her temple should be 
spotless as the vestments of their ministry. Rank 
only degrades, wealth only impoverishes, orna- 
ments but disfigure her. I would have her pure, 
unpensioned, unstipendiary ; she should rob the 
earth of nothing but its sorrows : a divine arch 
of promise, her extremities should rest on the 
horizon, and her span embrace the universe; but 
her only sustenance should be the tears that were 
exhaled and embellished by the sun-beam. Such 
is my idea of what religion ought to be. What 
b 4 



8 SPEECH 

mould this bill make it? A mendicant of the 
XT as tie, a menial at the levee, its manual the red- 
book, its liturgy the pension-list, its gospel the 
will of the minister ! Methinks 1 see the stalled 
and fatted victim of its creation, cringing with a 
brute suppliancy through the venal mob of minis- 
terial flatterers, crouching to the ephemeral idol of 
the day, and, like the devoted sacrifice of ancient 
heathenism, glorying in the garland that only de- 
corates him for death ! I will read to you the 
opinions of a celebrated Irishman, on the sug- 
gestion in his day of a bill similar to that now 
proposed for our oppression. He was a man who 
added to the pride not merely of his country but 
of his species — a man who robed the very soul of 
inspiration in the splendours of a pure and over- 
powering eloquence. I allude to Mr. Burke — an 
authority at least to which the sticklers for esta- 
blishments can offer no objection. " Before I had 
written thus far," says he, in his letter on the penal 
laws, " I heard of a scheme for giving to the Castle 
the patronage of the presiding members of the Ca- 
tholic clergy. At first I could scarcely credit it, 
for I believe it is the first time that the present- 
ation to other people's alms has been desired in 
any country. Never were the members of one 
religious sect fit to appoint the pastors to another. 
It is a great deal to suppose that the present Castle 
would nominate bishops for the Roman church in 
Ireland with a religious regard for its welfare. 
Perhaps they cannot, perhaps they dare not do it. 
But suppose them to be as well inclined, as I know 



AT SLIGO. 'J 

that I am, to do the Catholics all kinds of justice, 
I declare I would not, if it were in my power, 
take that patronage on myself. I know I ought 
not to do it. I belong to another community; 
and it would be an intolerable usurpation in me, 
where I conferred no benefit, or even if I did 
confer temporal advantages. How can the Lord- 
Lieutenant form the least judgment on their merits 
so as to decide which of the popish priests is fit to 
be a bishop ? It cannot be. The idea is ridiculous. 
He will hand them over to Lords-Lieutenant of 
> counties, justices of the peace, and others, who, 
for the purpose of vexing and turning into deri- 
sion this miserable people, will pick out the worst 
and most obnoxious they can find amongst the 
clergy, to govern the rest. Whoever is complain- 
ed against by his brother, will be considered as 
persecuted ; whoever is censured by his superior, 
will be looked upon as oppressed ; whoever is 
careless in his opinions, loose in his morals, will 
be called a liberal man, and will be supposed to 
have incurred hatred because he was not a bigot 
Informers, tale-bearers, perverse and obstinate 
men, flatterers, who turn their back upon their 
flock and court the Protestant gentlemen of their 
county, will be the objects of preferment, and 
then I run no risk in foretelling, that whatever 
order, quiet, and morality you have in the country 
will be lost." Now, let me ask you, is it to such 
characters as those described by Burke, that you 
would delegate the influence imputed to your 
priesthood ? Believe me, you would soon see them 



10 SPEECH 

transferring their devotion from the Cross to the 
Castle ; wearing their sacred vestments but as 
a masquerade-appendage, and under the degraded 
passport of the Almighty's name, sharing the plea- 
sures of the court, and the spoils of the people. 
When I say this, I am bound to add, and I do so 
from many proud and pleasing recollections, that 
I think the impression on the Catholic clergy of 
the present day would be late, and would be 
delible. But it is human nature. Rare are the 
instances in which a contact with the court has 
not been the beginning of corruption. The man 
of God is peculiarly disconnected with it. It 
directly violates his special mandate, who took his 
birth from the manger, and his disciples from the 
fishing-boat. Judas was the first who received 
the money of power, and it ended in the disgrace 
of his creed, and the death of his master. If I 
was a Catholic, I would peculiarly deprecate any 
interference with my priesthood. Indeed, I do 
not think, in any one respect in which we should 
wish to view the delegates of the Almighty, that, 
making fair allowances for human infirmity, they 
could be amended. The Catholic clergy of Ire- 
land are rare examples of the doctrines they incul- 
cate. Pious in their habits, almost primitive in 
their manners, they have no care but their 
flock — no study but their Gospel. It is not in 
the gaudy ring of courtly dissipation that you will 
find the Murrays, the Coppingers, and the Moy- 
lans of the present day — not at the levee, or the 
lounge, or the election-riot. No; you will find 



AT SLIGO. 11 

them wherever good is to be done or evil to be 
corrected — rearing their mitres in the van of 
misery, consoling the captive, reforming the con- 
vict, enriching the orphan ; ornaments of this 
world, and emblems of a better ; preaching their 
God through the practice of every virtue ; mo- 
nitors at the confessional, apostles in the pulpit, 
saints at the death-bed, holding the sacred water 
to the lip of sin, or pouring the redeeming unction 
on the agonies of despair. Oh, I would hold him 
little better than the Promethean robber, who would 
turn the fire of their eternal altar into the impure 
and perishable mass of this world's preferment. 
Better by far that the days of ancient barbarism 
should revive — better that your religion should 
again take refuge among the fastnesses of the 
mountain, and the solitude of the cavern — better 
that the rack of a murderous bigotry should again 
terminate the miseries of your priesthood, and that 
the gate of freedom should be only open to them 
through the gate of martyrdom, than that they 
should gild their missals with the wages of a court, 
and expect their ecclesiastical promotion, not from 
their superior piety, but their comparative prosti- 
tution. But why this interference with your prin- 
ciples of conscience ? Why is it that they will not 
erect your liberties save on the ruin of your 
temples ? Why is it that in this day of peace they 
demand securities from a people who in the day 
of danger constituted their strength ? When were 
they denied every security that was reasonable ? 
Was it in 1776> when a cloud of enemies, hovering 



If SPEECH 

on our coast, saw every heart a shield, and every 
hill a fortress ? Did they want securities in Catholic 
Spain? Were they denied securities in Catholic 
Portugal ? What is their security to-day in Catholic 
Canada ? Return — return to us our own glorious 
Wellington, and tell incredulous England what 
was her security amid the lines of Torres Vedras, 
or on the summit of Barrossa ! Rise, libelled 
martyrs of the Peninsula! — rise from your " gory 
bed," and give security for your childless parents ! 
No, there is not a Catholic family in Ireland, 
that for the glory of Great Britain is not weeping 
over a child's, a brother's, or a parent's grave, and 
yet still she clamours for securities ! Oh, Prejudice, 
where is thy reason ! Oh, Bigotry ! where is thy 
blush ! If ever there was an opportunity for 
England to combine gratitude with justice, and 
dignity with safety, it is the present. Now, when 
Irish blood has crimsoned the cross upon hernavai 
ilag, and an Irish hero strikes the harp to victory 
upon the summit of the Pyrenees. England — 
England ! do not hesitate. This hour of triumph 
may be but the hour of trial ; another season may 
see the splendid panorama of European vassalage, 
arrayed by your ruthless enemy, and glittering 
beneath the ruins of another capital — perhaps of 
London. Who can say it? A few months since, 
Moscow stood as splendid and as secure. Fair 
rose the morn on the patriarchal city — the em- 
press of her nation, the queen of commerce, the 
sanctuary of strangers, her thousand spires pierced 
the very heavens, and her domes of gold reflected 



AT SLICO. 18 

back the sun-beams. The spoiler came; he 
marked her for his victim ; and, as if his very glance 
was destiny, even before the nightfall, with all her 
pomp, and wealth, and happiness, she withered 
from the world! A heap of ashes told where 
once stood Moscow ! Merciful God, if this lord 
of desolation, heading his locust legions, were to 
invade our country; though I do not ask what 
would be your determination ; though, in the lan- 
guage of our young enthusiast, I am sure you would 
oppose him with " a sword in one hand, and a 
torch in the other ;" still I do ask, and ask with 
fearlessness, upon what single principle of policy 
or of justice, could the advocates for your exclusion 
solicit your assistance — could they expect you to 
support a constitution from whose benefits you 
-were debarred? With what front could they ask 
you to recover an ascendency, which in point of 
fact was but re-establishing your bondage ? 

It has been said that there is a faction in Ireland 
ready to join this despot — " a French party," as 
Mr. G rattan thought it decent, even in the very 
senate-house, to promulgate. Sir, I speak the 
universal voice of Ireland when I say, she spurns 
the imputation. There is no " French party" 
here ; but there is — and it would be strange if there 
was not — there is an Irish party—men who cannot 
bear to see their country taunted with the mockery 
of a constitution — men- who will be content with 
no connection that refuses them a community of 
benefits while it imposes a community of privations 
— men who, sooner than see this land polluted by 



14 SPEECH 

the footsteps of a slave, would wish the ocean- 
wave became its sepulchre, and Jhat the orb of 
heaven forgot where it existed. /It has been said 
too (and when we were to be calumniated, what 
has not been said ?) that Irishmen are neither fit for 
freedom or grateful for favours. In the first place, 
I deny that to be a favour which is a right; and in 
the next place, I utterly deny that a system of con- 
ciliation has ever been adopted with respect to 
Ireland. Try them, and, my life on it, they will be 
found grateful. I think I know my countrymen ; 
they cannot help being grateful for a benefit ; and 
there is no country on the earth where one would be 
conferred with more characteristic benevolence. 
They are, emphatically, the school-boys of the 
heart — a people of sympathy; their acts spring 
instinctively from their passions ; by nature ardent, 
by instinct brave, by inheritance generous. The 
children of impulse, they cannot avoid their virtues; 
and to be other than noble, they must not only be 
unnatural but unnational. Put my panegyric to 
the test. Enter the hovel of the Irish peasant. 
I do not say you will find the frugality of the 
Scotch, the comfort of the English, or the fantastic 
decorations of the French cottager ; but I do say, 
within those wretched bazaars of mud and misery, 
you will find sensibility the most affecting, polite- 
ness the most natural, hospitality the most grate- 
ful, merit the most unconscious ; their look is 
eloquence, their smile is love, their retort is wit, 
their remark is wisdom — not a wisdom borrowed 
from the dead, but that with which nature has 



AT SLIGO. \5 

herself inspired them ; an acute observance of the 
passing scene, and a deep insight into the motives 
of its agents. Try to deceive them, and see with 
what shrewdness they will detect ; try to outwit 
them, and see with what humour they will elude ; 
attack them with argument, and you will stand 
amazed at the strength of their expression, the 
rapidity of their ideas, and the energy of their 
gesture ! In short, God seems to have formed our 
country like our people : he has thrown round the 
one its wild, magnificent, decorated rudeness ; he 
has infused into the other the simplicity of genius 
and the seeds of virtue"^ he says audibly to us, 
" Give them cultivation." 

This is the way, gentlemen, in which I have 
always looked upon your question — not as a party, 
or a sectarian, or a Catholic, but as an Irish 
question. Is it possible that any man can seriously 
believe the paralysing five millions of such a people 
as I have been describing, can be a benefit to the 
empire ! Is there any man who deserves the name 
not of a statesman but of a rational being, who can 
think it politic to rob such a multitude of all the 
energies of an honourable ambition ! Look to Pro- 
testant Ireland, shooting over the empire those rays 
of genius, and those thunderbolts of war, that have 
at once embellished and preserved it. I speak not 
of a former asra. I refer not for my example to 
the day just passed, when our Burkes, our Barry s, 
and our Goldsmiths, exiled by this system from their 
native shore, wreathed the " immortal shamrock" 
round the brow of painting, poetry, and eloquence ! 



1 6 SPEECH 

But now, even while I speak, who leads the British 
senate ? A Protestant Irishman ! Who guides the 
British arms ? A Protestant Irishman ! And why, 
why is Catholic Ireland, with her quintuple popu- 
lation, stationary and silent ? Have physical causes 
neutralised its energies ? Has the religion of 
Christ stupefied its intellect? Has the God of 
mankind become the partisan of a monopoly, and 
put an interdict on its advancement ? Stranger, do 
not ask the bigotted and pampered renegade who 
has an interest in deceiving you ; but open the 
penal statutes, and weep tears of blood over the 
reason. Come, come yourself, and see this un- 
happy people ; see the Irishman, the only alien 
in Ireland, in rags and wretchedness, staining 
the sweetest scenery ever eye reposed on, perse- 
cuted by the extorting middle-man of some ab- 
sentee landlord, plundered by the lay-proctor of 
some rapacious and unsympathising incumbent, 
bearing through life but insults and injustice, and 
bereaved even of any hope in death by the heart- 
rending reflection that he leaves his children to 
bear like their father an abominable bondage ! Is 
this the fact? Let any man who doubts it walk 
out into your streets, and see the consequences of 
such a system ; see it rearing up crowds in a kind 
of apprenticeship to the prison, absolutely permit- 
ted by their parents from utter despair to lisp the 
alphabet and learn the alphabet of profligacy ! For 
my part, never did I meet one of these youthful 
assemblages without feeling within me a melan- 
choly emotion. How often have I thought, within 
13 



AT 9LIG0. 

that little circle of neglected triflers who seem to 
have been born in caprice and bred in orphanage, 
there may exist some mind formed of the finest 
mould and wrought for immortality ; a soul swell- 
ing with the energies and stamped with the patent 
of the Deity, which under proper culture might 
perhaps bless, adorn, immortalise, or ennoble em- 
pires ; some Cincinnatus, in whose breast the 
destinies of a nation may lie dormant ; some 
Milton, " pregnant with celestial fire ;" some 
Curran, who, when thrones were crumbled and 
dynasties forgotten, might stand the landmark of 
his country's genius, rearing himself amid regal 
ruins and national dissolution, a mental pyramid 
in the solitude of time, beneath whose shade things 
might moulder, and round whose summit eternity 
must play. Even in such a circle the young 
Demosthenes might have once been found, and 
Homer, the disgrace and glory of his age, have 
sung neglected ! Have not other nations wit- 
nessed those things, and who shall say that nature 
has peculiarly degraded the intellect of Ireland ? 
Oh ! my countrymen, let us hope that under better 
ar.spices and a sounder policy, the ignorance that 
thinks so may meet its refutation. Let us turn 
from the blight and ruin of this wintry day to the 
fond anticipation of an happier period, when our 
prostrate land shall stand erect among the nations, 
fearless and unfettered ; her brow blooming with 
the wreath of science, and her path strewed witli 
the offerings of art ; the breath of heaven blessing 
her flag* the extremities of earth acknowledging 
c 



IS SPEECH AT SLIGO. 

her name, her fields waving with the fruits of 
agriculture, her ports alive with the contributions 
of commerce, and her temples vocal with unre- 
stricted piety. Such is the ambition of the true 
patriot ; such are the views for which we are 
calumniated ! Oh, divine ambition ! Oh, delightful 
calumny ! Happy he who shall see thee accom- 
plished ! Happy he who through every peril toils 
for thy attainment ! Proceed, friend of Ireland 
and partaker of her wrongs, proceed undaunted to 
this glorious consummation. Fortune will not 
gild, power will not ennoble thee ; but thou shalt 
be rich in the love and titled by the blessings of 
thy country ; thy path shall be illumined by the 
public eye, thy labours lightened by the public 
gratitude ; and oh ! remember — amid the impedi- 
ments with which corruption will oppose, and the 
dejection with which disappointments may depress 
you — remember you are acquiring a name to be 
cherished by the future generations of earth, long 
after it has been enrolled amongst the inheritors 
cA' heaven. 



A 

SPEECH 

DELIVERED AT 

AN AGGREGATE MEETING 

OP 

THE ROMAN CATHOLICS 

OP 

CORK. 



TT is with no small degree of self-congratulation 
that I at length find myself in a province which 
every glance of the eye, and every throb of the 
heart, tells me is truly Irish ; and that congratu- 
lation is not a little enhanced by finding that you 
receive me not as quite a stranger. Indeed, if to 
respect the Christian without regard to his creed, 
if to love the country but the more for its cala- 
mities, if to hate oppression though it be robed in 
power, if to venerate integrity though it pine 
under persecution, gives a man any claim to your 
recognition ; then, indeed, I am not a stranger 
amongst you. There is a bond of union between 
brethren, however distant; there is a sympathy 
between the virtuous, however separated ; there is 
c 2 



'■20 SPEECH 

a heaven-born instinct by winch the associates of 
the heart become at once acquainted, and kindred 
natures as it were by magic see in the face of a 
stranger, the features of a friend. Thus it is, that, 
though we never met, you hail in me the sweet 
association, and I feel myself amongst you even as 
if I were in the home of my nativity. But this 
my knowledge of you was not left to chance ; nor 
was it left to the records of your charity, the me- 
morials of your patriotism, your municipal magni- 
ficence, or your commercial splendour ; it came to 
me hallowed by the accents of that tongue on 
which Ireland has so often hung with ecstacy, 
heightened by the eloquence and endeared by the 
sincerity of, I hope, our mutual friend. Let me 
congratulate him on having become in some de- 
gree naturalised in a province, where the spirit of 
the elder day seems to have lingered ; and let me 
congratulate you on the acquisition of a man who 
is at once the zealous advocate of your cause, and 
a practical instance of the injustice of your oppres- 
sions. Surely, surely if merit had fair play, if 
splendid talents, if indefatigable industry, if great 
research, if unsullied principle, if a heart full of 
the finest affections, if a mind matured in every 
manly accomplishment, in short, if every noble, 
public quality, mellowed and reflected in the pure 
mirror of domestic virtue, could entitle a subject 
to distinction in a state, Mi*. O'Connel should be 
distinguished ; but, it is his crime to be a Catholic, 
and his curse to be an Irishman. Simpleton ! he 
prefers his conscience to a place, and the love of 



AT CORK. <21 

his country to a participation in her plunder! In- 
deed, he will never rise. If he joined the bigots 
of my sect, he might be a sergeant; if he joined 
the infidels of your sect, he might enjoy a pension, 
and there is no knowing whether some Orange- 
corporator, on an Orange-anniversary, might not 
modestly yield him the precedence of giving " the 
glorious and immortal memory." Oh, yes, he 
might be privileged to get drunk in gratitude to 
the man who colonised ignorance in his native 
land, and left to his creed the legacy of legalised 
persecution. Nor would he stand alone, no matter 
what might be the measure of his disgrace, or the 
degree of his dereliction. You well know there 
are many of your own community who would leave 
him at the distance-post. In contemplating their 
recreancy, I should be almost tempted to smile at 
the exhibition of their pretensions, if there was not 
a kind of moral melancholy intermingled, that 
changed satire into pity, and ridicule into con- 
tempt. For my part, I behold them in the apathy 
of their servitude, as I would some miserable 
maniac in the contentment of his captivity. Poor 
creature ! when all that raised him from the brute 
is levelled, and his glorious intellect is mouldering 
in ruins, you may see him with his song of triumph, 
and his crown of straw, a fancied freeman mid the 
clanking of his chains, and an imaginary monarch 
beneath the inflictions of his keeper! Merciful 
God ! is it not almost an argument for the sceptic 
and the disbeliever, when we see the human shape 
almost without an aspiration of the human soul, 
c 3 



<2Q 



SPEECH 



separated by no boundary from the beasts that 
perish, beholding with indifference the captivity 
of their country, the persecution of their creed, 
and the helpless, hopeless destiny of their chil- 
dren ? But they have nor creed, nor consciences, 
nor country ; their god is gold, their gospel is a 
contract, their church a compting house, their 
characters a commodity ; they never pray but for 
the opportunities of corruption, and hold their 
consciences, as they do their government-deben- 
tures, at a price proportioned to the misfortunes of 
their country. But let us turn from those mendi- 
cants of disgrace : though Ireland is doomed to the 
stain of their birth, her mind need not be sullied 
by their contemplation. I turn from them with 
pleasure to the contemplation of your cause, which, 
as far as argument can effect" it, stands on a sublime 
and splendid elevation. Every obstacle has va- 
nished into air ; every favourable circumstance has 
hardened into adamant. The Pope, whom child- 
hood was taught to lisp as the enemy of religion, 
and age shuddered at as a prescriptive calamity, 
has by his example put the princes of Christendom 
to shame. This day of miracles, in which the 
human heart has been strung to its extremest 
point of energy ; this day, to which posterity will 
look for instances of every crime and every virtue, 
holds not in its page of wonders a more sublime 
phenomenon than that calumniated pontiff. Placed 
at the very pinnacle of human elevation, surround- 
ed by the pomp of the Vatican and the splendours 
of the court, pouring the mandates of Christ from 



AT CORK. 23 

the throne of the Caesars, nations were his sub- 
jects, kings were his companions, religion was his 
handmaid ; he went forth gorgeous with the accu- 
mulated dignity of ages, every knee bending, and 
every eye blessing the prince of one world and the 
prophet of another. Have we not seen him, in 
one moment, his crown crumbled, his sceptre a 
reed, his throne a shadow, his home a dungeon ! 
But if we have, Catholics, it was only to show how 
inestimable is human virtue compared with human 
grandeur ; it was only to show those whose faith 
was failing, and whose fears were strengthening, 
that the simplicity of the patriarchs, the piety of 
the saints, and the patience of the martyrs, had 
not wholly vanished. Perhaps it was also ordained 
to show the bigot at home, as w T ell as the tyrant 
abroad, that though the person might be chained, 
and the motive calumniated, Religion was still 
strong enough to support her sons, and to con- 
found, if she could not reclaim, her enemies. No 
threats could awe, no promises could tempt, no 
sufferings could appal him ; mid the damps of his 
dungeon he dashed away the cup in which the 
pearl of his liberty was to be dissolved. Only 
reflect on the state of the world at that moment ! 
All around him w r as convulsed, the very found- 
ations of the earth seemed giving way, the comet 
was let loose that " from its fiery hair shook 
pestilence and death," the twilight was gathering, 
the tempest was roaring, the darkness was at hand ; 
but he towered sublime, like the last mountain in 
the deluge — majestic, not less in his elevation than 
c 4 



L 24f SPEECH 

in his solitude, immutable amid change, magnifi- 
cent amid ruin, the last remnant of earth's beauty, 
the last resting-place of heaven's light ! Thus have 
the terrors of the Vatican retreated ; thus has that 
cloud which hovered o'er your cause brightened at 
once into a sign of your faith and an assurance of 
your victory. — Another obstacle, the omnipotence 
of France ; I know it was a pretence, but it was 
made an obstacle — What has become of it? The 
spell of her invincibility destroyed, the spirit of 
her armies broken, her immense boundary dis- 
membered, and the lord of her empire become the 
exile of a rock. She allows fancy no fear, and 
bigotry no speciousness ; and, as if in the very 
operation of the change to point the purpose of 
your redemption, the hand that replanted the re- 
jected lily was that of an Irish Catholic. Perhaps 
it is not also unworthy of remark, that the last 
day of her triumph, and the first of her decline, 
was that on which her insatiable chieftain smote 
the holy head of your religion. You will hardly 
suspect I am imbued with the follies of super- 
stition; but when the man now unborn shall trace 
the story of that eventful day, he will see the 
adopted child of fortune borne on the wings of 
victory from clime to clime, marking every move- 
ment with a triumph, and every pause with a 
crown, till time, space, seasons, nay, even nature 
herself, seeming to vanish from before him, in the 
blasphemy of his ambition he smote the apostle of 
his God, and dared to raise the everlasting Cross 
amid his perishable trophies ! I am no fanatic, but 



AT CORK. 2,5 

is it not remarkable ? May it not be one of those 
signs which the Deity has sometimes given in 
compassion to our infirmity ; signs, which in the 
punishment of one nation not unfrequently denote 
the warning to another ; — 

" Signs sent by God to mark the will of Heaven, 
Signs, which bid nations weep and be forgiven." 

The argument, however, is taken from the bigot ; 
and those whose consciousness taught them to ex- 
pect what your loyalty should have taught them 
to repel, can no longer oppose you from the terrors 
of invasion. Thus, then, the papal phantom and 
the French threat have vanished into nothing. — 
Another obstacle, the tenets of your creed. Has 
England still to learn them ? I will tell her 
where. Let her ask Canada, the last plank of 
her American shipwreck. Let her ask Portugal, 
the first omen of her European splendour. Let 
her ask Spain, the most Catholic country in the 
universe, her Catholic friends, her Catholic allies, 
her rivals in the triumph, her reliance in the re- 
treat, her last stay w T hen the world had deserted 
her. They must have told her on the field of 
blood whether it was true that they " kept no faith 
with heretics. " Alas, alas ! how miserable a thing 
is bigotry, when every friend puts it to the blush, 
and every triumph but rebukes its weakness. If 
England continued still to accredit this calumny, I 
would direct her for conviction to the hero for 
whose gift alone she owes us an eternity of gra- 
titude j whom we have seen leading the van of 



SPEECH 



universal emancipation, decking his wreath with 
the flowers of every soil, and filling his army with 
the soldiers of every sect ; before whose splendid 
dawn, every tear exhaling and every vapour 
vanishing, the colours of the European world 
have revived, and the spirit of European liberty 
(may no crime avert the omen!) seems to have 
arisen ! Suppose he was a Catholic, could this 
have been? Suppose Catholics did not follow 
him, could this have been? Did the Catholic 
Cortes enquire his faith when they gave him the 
supreme command ? Did the Regent of Portugal 
withhold from his creed the reward of his valour ? 
Did the Catholic soldier pause at Salamanca to 
dispute upon polemics ? Did the Catholic chief- 
tain prove upon Barrossathat he kept no faith with 
heretics, or did the creed of Spain, the same with 
that of France, the opposite of that of England, 
prevent their association in the field of liberty? 
Oh, no, no, no ! the citizen of every clime, 
the friend of every colour, and the child of every 
creed, liberty walks abroad in the ubiquity of her 
benevolence ; alike to her the varieties of faith 
and the vicissitudes of country ; she has no object 
but the happiness of man, no bounds but the 
extremities of creation. Yes, yes, it was reserved 
for Wellington to redeem his own country when 
he was regenerating every other. It was reserved 
for him to show how vile were the aspersions on 
your creed, how generous were the glo wings of 
your gratitude. He was a Protestant, yet Ca- 
tholics trusted him j he was a Protestant, yet 



AT CORK. 27 

Catholics advanced him ; he is a Protestant 
Knight in Catholic Portugal, he is a Protestant 
Duke in Catholic Spain, he is the Protestant 
commander of Catholic armies ; he is more, 
he is the living proof of the Catholic's liberality, 
and the undeniable refutation of the Protestant's 
injustice. Gentlemen, as a Protestant, though I 
may blush for the bigotry of many of my creed 
who continue obstinate in the teeth of this con- 
viction, still were I a Catholic I should feel little 
triumph in the victory. I should only hang my 
head at the distresses which this warfare occasioned 
to my country. I should only think how long she 
had writhed in the agony of her disunion ; how 
long she had bent, fettered by slaves, cajoled by 
blockheads, and plundered by adventurers ; the 
proverb of the fool, the prey of the politician, 
the dupe of the designing, the experiment of 
the desperate, struggling as it were between her 
own fanatical and infatuated parties, those hell- 
engendered serpents which enfold her, like the 
Trojan seer, even at the worship of her altars, and 
crush her to death in the very embraces of her 
children ! It is time (is it not ?) that she should 
be extricated. The act would be proud, the 
means would be Christian ; mutual forbearance, 
mutual indulgence, mutual concession ; I would 
say to the Protestant, Concede ; I would say to 
the Catholic, Forgive ; I would say to both, 
Though you bend not at the same shrine, you have 
a common God, and a common country ; the one 
iias commanded love, the other kneels to you for 



28 SPEECH 

peace. This hostility of her sects has been the 
disgrace, the peculiar disgrace, of Christianity. 
The Gentoo loves his cast, so does the Maho- 
metan, so does the Hindoo, whom England out of 
the abundance of her charity is about to teach her 
creed ; — I hope she may not teach her practice. 
But Christianity, Christianity alone exhibits her 
thousand sects, each denouncing his neighbour 
here, in the name of God, and damning hereafter 
out of pure devotion ! " You're a heretic," says 
the Catholic : " You're a Papist," says the Pro- 
testant : " I appeal to Saint Peter," exclaims the 
Catholic : " I appeal to Saint Athanasius," cries 
the Protestant ; " and if it goes to damning, he's 
as good at it as any saint in the calendar." " You'll 
all be damned eternally," moans out the Methodist ; 
" I'm the elect !" Thus it is, you see, each has 
his anathema, his accusation, and his retort, and 
in the end Religion is the victim ! The victory of 
each is the overthrow of all ; and Infidelity, laugh- 
ing at the contest, writes the refutation of their 
creed in the blood of the combatants ! I wonder 
if this reflection has ever struck any of those 
reverend dignitaries who rear their mitres against 
Catholic emancipation. Has it ever glanced across 
their Christian zeal, if the story of our country 
should have casually reached the valleys of Hin- 
dostan, with what an argument they are furnishing 
the heathen world against their sacred missionary? 
In what terms could the Christian ecclesiastic 
answer the Eastern Bramin, when he replied to 
his exhortations in language such as this ? " Father, 



AT CORK. 29 

we have heard your doctrine; it is splendid in 
theory, specious in promise, sublime in prospect ; 
like the world to which it leads, it is rich in the 
miracles of light. But, Father, we have heard 
that there are times when its rays vanish and leave 
your sphere in darkness, or when your only lustre 
arises from meteors of fire, and moons of blood : 
we have heard of the verdant island which the 
Great Spirit has raised in the bosom of the waters 
with such a bloom of beauty, that the very wave 
she has usurped worships the loveliness of her 
intrusion. The sovereign of our forests is not 
more generous in his anger than her sons ; the 
snow-flake, ere it falls on the mountain, is not purer 
than her daughters ; little inland seas reflect the 
splendours of her landscape, and her valleys smile 
at the story of the serpent ! Father, is it true that 
this isle of the sun, this people of the morning, 
find the fury of the ocean in your creed, and more 
than the venom of the viper in your policy ? Is it 
true that for six hundred years, her peasant has 
not tasted peace, nor her piety rested from per- 
secution ? Oh ! Brama, defend us from the God 
of the Christian ! Father, father, return to your 
brethren, retrace the waters ; we may live in igno- 
rance, but we live in love, and we will not taste 
the tree that gives us evil when it gives us wisdom. 
The heart is our guide, nature is our gospel; 
in the imitation of our fathers we found our hope, 
and, if we err, on the virtue of our motives we 
rely for our redemption." How would the mis- 
sionaries of the mitre answer him ? How will they 



SO SPEECH 

answer that insulted Being of whose creed thei> 
conduct carries the refutation ? — But to what end 
do I argue with the Bigot ? — a wretch, whom no 
philosophy can humanise, no charity soften, no 
religion reclaim, no miracle convert ; a monster, 
who, red with the fires of hell, and bending under 
the crimes of earth, erects his murderous divinity 
upon a throne of skulls, and would gladly feed 
even with a brother's blood the cannibal appetite 
of his rejected altar! His very interest cannot 
soften him into humanity. Surely, if it could, no 
man would be found mad enough to advocate a 
system which cankers the very heart of society, 
and undermines the natural resources of govern- 
ment ; which takes away the strongest excitement 
to industry, by closing up every avenue to laudable 
ambition ; which administers to the vanity or the 
vice of a party, when it should only study the 
advantage of a people ; and holds out the per- 
quisites of state as an impious bounty on the per- 
secution of religion. — I have already shown that 
the power of the Pope, that the power of France, 
and that the tenets of your creed, were but ima- 
ginary auxiliaries to this system. Another pre- 
tended obstacle has, however, been opposed to 
your emancipation. I allude to the danger arising 
from a foreign influence. What a triumphant 
answer can you give to that ! Methinks, as lately, 
I see the assemblage of your hallowed hierarchy 
surrounded by the priesthood, and followed by the 
people, waving aloft the crucifix of Christ alike 
against the seductions of the court, and the commands 



AT CORK. 31 

of the conclave ! Was it not a delightful, an heart- 
cheering spectacle, to see that holy band of brothers 
preferring the chance of martyrdom to the certainty 
of promotion, and postponing all the gratifications 
of worldlv pride, to the severe but heaven-gaining 
glories of their poverty ? They acted honestly, 
and they acted wisely also ; for I say here, before 
the largest assembly 1 ever saw in any country — 
and I believe you are almost all Catholics — 
I say here, that if the see of Rome presumed to 
impose any temporal mandate directly or indirectly 
on the Irish people, the Irish bishops should at 
once abandon it, or their flocks, one and all, would 
abjure and banish both of them together. History 
affords us too fatal an example of the perfidious, ar- 
rogant, and venal interference of a papal usurper of 
former days in the temporal jurisdiction of this 
country ; an interference assumed without right, 
exercised without principle, and followed by cala- 
mities apparently without end. Thus, then, has 
every obstacle vanished j but it has done more — 
every obstacle has, as it were by miracle, pro- 
duced a powerful argument in your favour ! How 
do I prove it ? Follow me in my proofs, and you 
will see by w r hat links the chain is united. The 
power of Napoleon w r as the grand and leading ob- 
stacle to your emancipation. That power led him 
to the menace of an Irish invasion. What did that 
prove ? Only the sincerity of Irish allegiance. On 
the very threat, we poured forth our volunteers, 
our yeomen, and our militia ; and the country be- 
came encircled with an armed and a loyal popu- 



32 SPEECH 

latioii. Thus, then, the calumny of your disaffection 
vanished. That power next led him to the inva- 
sion of Portugal. What did it prove? Only the 
good faith of Catholic allegiance. Every field in 
the Peninsula saw the Catholic Portuguese hail the 
English Protestant as a brother and a friend joined 
m the same pride and the same peril. Thus, then, 
vanished the slander that you could not keep 
faith with heretics. That power next led him to 
the' imprisonment of the Pontiff, so long suspected 
of being quite ready to sacrifice every thing to his 
interest and his dominion. What did that prove ? 
The strength of his principles, the purity of his 
faith, the disinterestedness of his practice. It 
proved a life spent in the study of the saints, and 
ready to be closed by an imitation of the martyrs. 
Thus, also, was the head of your religion vindi- 
cated to Europe. There remained behind but 
one impediment — your liability to a foreign in- 
fluence. Now mark ! The Pontiff's captivity 
led to the transmission of Quarantotti's rescript; 
and, on its arrival, from the priest to the peasant, 
there was not a Catholic in the land, who did not 
spurn the document of Italian audacity ! Thus, 
then, vanished also the phantom of a foreign in- 
fluence ! Is this conviction ? Is not the hand of 
God in it ? Oh yes ! for observe what followed. 
The very moment that power, which was the first 
and last and leading argument against you, had, 
by its special operation, banished every obstacle; 
that power itself, as it were by enchantment, eva- 
porated at once; and peace with Europe took 
13 



AT CORK. 

away the last pretence for your exclusion. Peace 
with Europe ! alas, alas, there is no peace for Ire- 
land : the universal pacification was but the sig- 
nal for renewed hostility to us, and the mockery 
of its preliminaries were tolled through our pro- 
vinces by the knell of the curfew. I ask, is it 
not time that this hostility should cease ? If ever 
there was a day when it was necessary, that day 
undoubtedly exists no longer. The continent is 
triumphant, the Peninsula is free, France is our 
ally. The hapless house which gave birth to Jaco- 
bitism is extinct for ever. The Pope has been 
found not only not hostile, but complying. In- 
deed, if England would recollect the share you 
had in these sublime events, the very recollection 
should subsidise her into gratitude. But should 
she not — should she, with a baseness monstrous 
and unparalleled, forget our services, she has still 
to study a tremendous lesson. The ancient order 
of Europe, it is true, is restored, but what restored 
it ? Coalition after coalition had crumbled away 
before the might of the conqueror ; crowns were 
but ephemeral ; monarchs only the tenants of an 
hour ; the descendant of Frederick dwindled into 
a vassal ; the heir of Peter shrunk into the recesses 
of his frozen desert ; the successor of Charles 
roamed a vagabond, not only throneless but house- 
less ; every evening sun set upon a change ; every 
morning dawned upon some new convulsion : in 
short, the whole political globe quivered as with 
an earthquake, and who could tell what venerable 
monument was next to shiver beneath the splen- 

D 



34 SPEECH 

did, frightful, and reposeless heavings of the 
French volcano! What gave Europe peace and 
England safety amid this palsy of her Princes? 
Was it not the Landwehr and the Landsturm and 
the Levy en Masse ? Was it not the People ? — 
that first and last, and best and noblest, as well as 
safest security of a virtuous government. It is a 
glorious lesson ; she ought to study it in this hour 
of safety ; but should she not — 

ft Oh woe be to the Prince who rules by fear, 
When danger comes upon him !" 

She wil ladopt it. I hope it from her wisdom ; I 
expect it from her policy; I claim it from her 
justice; I demand it from her gratitude. She 
must at length see that there is a gross mistake in 
the management of Ireland. No wise man ever 
yet imagined injustice to be his interest; and the 
minister who thinks he serves a state by upholding 
the most irritating and the most impious of all 
monopolies, will one day or other find himself 
miserably mistaken. This system of persecution 
is not the way to govern this country ; at least to 
govern it with any happiness to itself, or advan- 
tage to its rulers. Centuries have proved its total 
inefficiency, and if it be continued for centuries, 
the proofs will be but multiplied. Why, however, 
should I blame the English people, when I see 
our own representatives so shamelessly negligent 
of our interests? The other day, for instance, 
when Mr. Peele introduced, aye and passed too, 
his three newly-invented penal bills, to the neces- 



AT CORK. $5 

sity of which every assises in Ireland, and as 
honest a judge as ever dignified or redeemed the 
ermine, has given the refutation ; why was it 
that no Irish member rose in his place to vindicate 
his country ? Where were the nominal represen- 
tatives of Ireland? Where were the renegade 
revilers of the demagogue ? Where were the 
noisy proclaimers of the Board ? What, was there 
not one voice to own the country ? Was the patriot 
of 1782 an assenting auditor ? Were our hundred 
itinerants mute and motionless — " quite chop- 
fallen?" or is it only w 7 hen Ireland is slandered 
and her motives misrepresented, and her oppres- 
sions are basely and falsely denied, that their 
venal throats are ready to echo the chorus of mi- 
nisterial calumny ? Oh, I should not have to ask 
those questions, if, in the late contest for this city, 
you had prevailed, and sent Hutchinson into 
Parliament; he would have risen, though alone, 
as I have often seen him — richer not less in he- 
reditary fame, than in personal accomplishments ; 
the ornament of Ireland as she is, the solitary 
remnant of what she was. If slander dare asperse 
her, it would not have done so with impunity. 
He would have encouraged the timid ; he would 
have shamed the recreant ; and though he could 
not save us from chains, he would at least have 
shielded us from calumny. Let me hope that his 
absence shall be but of short duration, and that 
this city will earn an additional claim to the gra- 
titude of the country, by electing him her repre- 
sentative. I scarcely know him but as a public 
d 2 



36 SPEECH AT CORK. 

man, and considering the state to which we am 
reduced by the apostasy of some, and the ingra- 
titude of others, and venality of more, -— I say you 
should inscribe the conduct of such a man in the 
manuals of your devotion, and in the primers of 
your children, but above all, you should act on 
it yourselves. Let me entreat of you, above all 
things, to sacrifice any personal differences amongst 
yourselves, for the great cause in which you are 
embarked. Remember, the contest is for your 
children, your country, and your God ; and re- 
member also, that the day of Irish union will be 
the natal day of Irish liberty. When your own 
Parliament (which I trust in Heaven we may yet 
see again) voted you the right of franchise, and 
the right of purchase, it gave you, if you are not 
false to yourselves, a certainty of your emancipa- 
tion. My friends, farewel ! This has been a 
most unexpected meeting to me ; it has been our 
first — it may be our last. I can never forget the 
enthusiasm of this reception. I am too much 
affected by it to make professions j but, believe me, 
no matter where I may be driven by the whim of 
my destiny, you shall find me one in whom change 
of place shall create no change of principle ; one 
whose memory must perish ere he forgets his 
country ; whose heart must be cold when it beat* 
not for her happiness. 



A 

SPEECH 

DELIVERED AT A DINNER GIVEN ON 

DINAS ISLAND, 

IN THE LAKE OF KILLARNEY. 



.MR. PHILLIPS S HEALTH BEING GIVEN, TOGETHER WITH 
THAT OF MR. PAYNE, A YOUNG AMERICAN. 



TT is not with the vain hope of returning by 
words the kindnesses which have been literally 
showered on me during the short period of our 
acquaintance, that I now interrupt, for a moment, 
the flow of your festivity. Indeed, it is not neces- 
sary ; an Irishman needs no requital for his hospi- 
tality ; its generous impulse is the instinct of his 
nature, and the very consciousness of the act 
carries its recompense along with it. But, Sir, 
there are sensations excited by an allusion in your 
toast, under the influence of which silence would 
be impossible. To be associated with Mr. Payne 
must be, to any one who regards private virtues 
and personal accomplishments, a source of peculiar 
pride ; and that feeling is not a little enhanced in 
me by a recollection of the country to which we 
d 3 



38 SPEECH 

are indebted for his qualifications. Indeed, the 
mention of America has never failed to fill me 
with the most lively emotions. In my earliest 
infancy, that tender season when impressions, at 
once the most permanent and the most powerful, 
are likely to be excited, the story of her then recent 
struggle raised a throb in every heart that loved 
liberty, and wrung a reluctant tribute even from 
discomfited oppression. I saw her spurning alike 
the luxuries that would enervate, and the legions 
that would intimidate ; dashing from her lips the 
poisoned cup of European servitude ; and, through 
all the vicissitudes of her protracted conflict, dis- 
playing a magnanimity that defied misfortune, and 
a moderation that gave new grace to victory. It 
was the first vision of my childhood ; it will de- 
scend with me to the grave. But if, as a man, I 
venerate the mention of America, what must be 
my feelings towards her as an Irishman. Never,, 
oh never, while memory remains, can Ireland 
forget the home of her emigrant, and the asylum 
of her exile. No matter whether their sorrows 
sprung from the errors of enthusiasm, or the 
realities of suffering, from fancy or infliction ; that 
must be reserved for the scrutiny of those whom 
the lapse of time shall acquit of partiality. It is 
for the men of other ages to investigate and record 
it ; but surely it is for the men of every age to hail 
the hospitality that received the shelterless, and love 
the feeling that befriended the unfortunate. Search 
creation round, where can you find a country that 
presents so sublime a view, so interesting an anti- 



AT DINAS ISLAND. 39 

cipation ? What noble institutions ! What a com- 
prehensive policy ! What a wise equalisation of 
every political advantage ! The oppressed of all 
countries, the martyrs of every creed, the innocent 
victim of despotic arrogance or superstitious phrensy, 
may there find refuge ; his industry encouraged, 
his piety respected, his ambition animated ; with 
no restraint but those laws which are the same to 
all, and no distinction but that which his merit 
may originate. Who can deny that the existence 
of such a country presents a subject for human 
congratulation ! Who can deny that its gigantic 
advancement offers a field for the most rational 
conjecture ! At the end of the very next cen- 
tury, if she proceeds as she seems to promise, 
what a wondrous spectacle may she not exhibit ! 
Who shall say for what purpose a mysterious 
Providence may not have designed her ! Who 
shall say that when, in its follies or its crimes, 
the old world may have interred all the pride of 
its power, and all the pomp of its civilisation, 
human nature may not find its destined renovation 
in the new ! For myself, I have no doubt of it. I 
have not the least doubt that when our temples 
and our trophies shall have mouldered into dust — 
when the glories of our name shall be but the 
legend of tradition, and the light of our achieve- 
ments only live in song ; philosophy will rise again 
in the sky of her Franklin, and glory rekindle at 
the urn of her Washington. Is this the vision of 
a romantic fancy ? Is it even improbable ? Is it 
half so improbable as the events which for the last 
d 4 



40 SPEECH 

twenty years have rolled like successive tides over' 
the surface of the European world, each erasing 
the impression that preceded it ? Thousands 
upon thousands, Sir, I know there are, who 
will consider this supposition as wild and whim- 
sical 5 but they have dwelt with little reflec- 
tion upon the records of the past. They have 
but ill observed the never-ceasing progress of 
national rise and national ruin. They form their 
judgment on the deceitful stability of the present 
hour, never considering the innumerable monar- 
chies and republics, in former days, apparently 
as permanent, their very existence become now 
the subjects of speculation, I had almost said of 
scepticism. I appeal to History ! Tell me, thou 
reverend chronicler of the grave, can all the illu- 
sions of ambition realised, can all the wealth of 
an universal commerce, can all the achievements 
of successful heroism, or all the establishments of 
this world's wisdom, secure to empire the perma- 
nency of its possessions ? Alas, Troy thought so 
once, yet the land of Priam lives only in song! 
Thebes thought so once, yet her hundred gates 
have crumbled, and her very tombs are but as 
the dust they were vainly intended to commemo- 
rate ! So thought Palmyra — where is she ? So 
thought Persepolis, and now — 

" Yon waste, where roaming lions how], 
Yon aisle, where moans the gray-eyed owl. 
Shows the proud Persian's great abode, 
Where sceptred once, an earthly god, 
His power-clad arm controlled each happier clime, 
Where sports the warbling muse, and fancy soars sublime." 



AT DINAS ISLAND. 41 

So thought the countries of Demosthenes and the 
Spartan, yet Leoniclas is trampled by the timid 
slave, and Athens insulted by the servile, mind- 
less, and enervate Ottoman ! In his hurried march, 
Time has but looked at their imagined immortality, 
and all its vanities, from the palace to the tomb, 
have, with their ruins, erased the very impression 
of his footsteps! The days of their glory are as. 
if they had never been ; and the island that was 
then a speck, rude and neglected in the barren 
ocean, now rivals the ubiquity of their commerce, 
the glory of their arms, the fame of their philo- 
sophy, the eloquence of their senate, and the in- 
spiration of their bards ! Who shall say then, 
contemplating the past, that England, proud and 
potent as she appears, may not one day be what 
Athens is, and the young America yet soar to be 
what Athens was ! Who shall say, when the Euro- 
pean column shall have mouldered, and the night of 
barbarism obscured its very ruins, that that mighty 
continent may not emerge from the horizon, to 
rule for its time sovereign of the ascendant ! 

Such, Sir, is the natural progress of human 
operations, and such the unsubstantial mockery of 
human pride. But I should, perhaps, apologise 
for this digression. The tombs are at best a sad 
although an instructive subject. At all events, 
they are ill suited to such an hour as this. I shall 
endeavour to atone for it, by turning to a theme 
which tombs cannot inurn or revolutions alter. It 
is the custom of your board, and a noble one it is, 
to deck the cup of the gay with the garland of the 






42 'SPEECH 

great ; and surely, even in the eyes of its deity, 
his grape is not the less lovely when glowing be- 
neath the foliage of the palm-tree and the myrtle. 
Allow me to add one flower to the chaplet, which, 
though it sprang in America, is no exotic. Virtue 
planted it, and it is naturalised every where. I 
see you anticipate me — I see you concur with me, 
that it matters very little what immediate spot 
may be the birth-place of such a man as Washing- 
ton. No people can claim, no country can ap- 
propriate him ; the boon of Providence to the 
human race, his fame is eternity, and his residence 
creation. Though it was the defeat of our arms, 
and the disgrace of our policy, I almost bless the 
convulsion in which he had his origin. If the 
heavens thundered and the earth rocked, yet, 
when the storm passed, how pure was the climate 
that it cleared; how bright in the brow of the 
•firmament was the planet which it revealed to us ! 
In the production of Washington, it does really 
appear as if nature was endeavouring to improve 
upon herself, and that all the virtues of the ancient 
world were but so many studies preparatory to the 
patriot of the new. Individual instances no doubt 
there were ; splendid exemplifications of some 
single qualification : Caesar was merciful, Scipio 
was continent, Hannibal was patient ; but it was 
reserved for Washington to blend them all in one, 
and like the lovely chef d'eewvre of the Grecian 
artist, to exhibit in one glow of associated beauty, 
the pride of every model, and the perfection of 
every master. As a General, he marshalled the 



AT DIN AS ISLAND. 

peasant into a veteran, and supplied by discipline' 
the absence of experience ; as a statesman, he en- 
larged the policy of the cabinet into the most com- 
prehensive system of general advantage ; and such 
was the wisdom of his views, and the philosophy 
of his counsels, that to the soldier and the states- 
man he almost added the character of the sage ! 
A conqueror, he was untainted with the crime of 
blood ; a revolutionist, he was free from any stain 
of treason ; for aggression commenced the contest, 
and his country called him to the command. 
Liberty unsheathed his sword, necessity stained, 
victory returned it. If he had paused here, history 
might have doubted what station to assign him, 
whether at the head of her citizens or her soldiers, 
her heroes or her patriots. But the last glorious 
act crowns his career, and banishes all hesitation. 
Who, like Washington, after having emancipated 
an hemisphere, resigned its crown, and preferred 
the retirement of domestic life to the adoration of 
a land he might be almost said to have created ! 

" How shall we rank thee upon Glory's page, 
Thou more than soldier and ju3t less than sage ; 
All thou hast been reflects less fame on thee, 
Far less than all thou hast forborne to be ! 

Such, Sir, is the testimony of one not to be 
accused of partiality in his estimate of America. 
Happy, proud America ! the lightnings of heaven 
yielded to your philosophy ! The temptations of 
earth could not seduce your patriotism ! 

I have the honour, Sir, of proposing to you 
as a toast, The immortal memory of George 
Washington ! 



SPEECH 

DELIVERED AT 

AN AGGREGATE MEETING 

OF 

THE ROMAN CATHOUCS^ 

OF THE COUNTY AND CITY OF 

DUBLIN. 



XT AVING taken, in the discussions on your ques- 
tion, such humble share as was allotted to 
my station and capacity, I may be permitted to 
offer my ardent congratulations at the proud pin- 
nacle on which it this day reposes. After having 
combated calumnies the most atrocious, sophistries 
the most plausible, and perils the most appalling, 
that slander could invent, or ingenuity devise, or 
power 'array against you, I at length behold the 
assembled rank and wealth and talent of the Ca- 
tholic body offering to the Legislature that appeal 
which cannot be rejected, if there be a Power in 
heaven to redress injury, or a spirit on earth to 
administer justice. No matter what may be the 
depreciations of faction or of bigotry ; this earth 
never presented a more ennobling spectacle than 



SPEECH AT DUBLIN. 45 

that of a Christian country suffering for her reli- 
gion with the patience of a martyr, and suing for 
her liberties with the expostulations of a philo- 
sopher ; reclaiming the bad by her piety ; refuting 
the bigotted by her practice ; wielding the Apos- 
tle's weapons in the patriot's cause, and at length, 
laden with chains and with laurels, seeking from 
the country she had saved the Constitution she 
had shielded ! Little did I imagine, that in such 
a state of your cause, we should be called together 
to counteract the impediments to its success, cre- 
ated not by its enemies, but by those supposed to 
be its friends. It is a melancholy occasion; but 
melancholy as it is, it must be met, and met with 
the fortitude of men struggling in the sacred cause 
of liberty. I do not allude to the proclamation of 
your Board ; of that Board I never was a member, 
so I can speak impartially. It contained much 
talent, some learning, many virtues. It was 
valuable on that account ; but it was doubly 
valuable as being a vehicle for the individual senti- 
ments of any Catholic, and for the aggregate sen- 
timents of every Catholic. Those who seceded 
from it, do not remember that, individually, they 
are nothing ; that as a body, they are every thing. 
It is not this wealthy slave, or that titled sycophant, 
whom the bigots dread, or the parliament respects ! 
No, it is the body, the numbers, the rank, the pro- 
perty, the genius, the perseverance, the education, 
but above all, the Union of the Catholics. I am 
far from defending every measure of the Board — 
perhaps I condemn some of its measures even 



46 SPEECH 

more than those who have seceded from it ; but is 
it a reason, if a general makes one mistake, that 
his followers are to desert him, especially when the 
contest is for all that is dear or valuable? No 
doubt the Board had its errors. Show me the 
human institution which has not. Let the man, 
then, who denounces it, prove himself superior to 
humanity, before he triumphs in his accusation. 
I am sorry for its suppression. When I consider 
the animals who are in office around us, the act 
does not surprise me; but I confess, even from 
them, the manner did, and the time chosen did, 
most sensibly. I did not expect it on the very 
hour when the news of universal peace was first 
promulgated, and on the anniversary of the only 
British monarch's birth, who ever gave a boon to 
this distracted country. 

You will excuse this digression, rendered indeed 
in some degree necessary. I shall now confine 
myself exclusively to your resolution, which deter- 
mines on the immediate presentation of your pe- 
tition, and censures the neglect of any discussion 
on it by your advocates during the last session of 
Parliament. You have a right to demand most 
fully the reasons of any man who dissents from 
Mr. Grattan. I will give you mine explicitly. 
But I shall first state the reasons which he has 
given for the postponement of your question. I 
shall do so out of respect to him, if indeed it can 
be called respect, to quote those sentiments, which 
on their very mention must excite your ridicule. 
Mr. Grattan presented your petition, and, on mov- 



AT DUELIN". 47 

ing that it should lie where so many preceding; 
ones have lain, namely, on the table, he declared it 
to be his intention to move for no discussion. 
Here, in the first place, I think Mr.Grattan wrong; 
lie got that petition, if not on the express, at least 
on the implied condition of having it immediately 
discussed. There was not a man at the aggregate 
meeting at which it was adopted, who did not 
expect a discussion on the very first opportunity. 
Mr.Grattan, however, was angry at " suggestions." 
I do not think Mr. Grattan, of all men, had any 
right to be so angry at receiving that which every 
English member was willing to receive, and was 
actually receiving from any English corn-factor. 
Mr. Grattan was also angry at our " violence." 
Neither do I think he had any occasion to be so 
squeamish at what he calls our violence. There 
was a day, when Mr. Grattan would not have 
spurned our suggestions, and there was also a day 
when he was fifty-fold more intemperate than any 
of his oppressed countrymen, whom he now holds 
up to the English people as so unconstitutionally 
violent. A pretty way, forsooth, for your advocate 
to commence conciliating a foreign auditory in 
favour of your petition. Mr. Grattan, however, 
has fulfilled his own prophecy, that " an oak of 
the forest is too old to be transplanted at fifty," 
and our fears that an Irish native would soon lose 
its raciness in an English atmosphere. " It is not 
my intention," says he, " to move for a discussion 
at present." Why? " Great obstacles have been 
removed." That's his first reason, « I am how- 



4S SPEECH 

ever," says he, " still ardent." Ardent ! Why it 
strikes me to be a very novel kind of ardour, which 
toils till it has removed every impediment, and 
then pauses at the prospect of its victory ! " And I 
am of opinion," he continues, " that any immediate 
discussion would be the height of precipitation :" 
that is, after having removed the impediments, he 
pauses in his path, declaring he is " ardent :" and 
after centuries of suffering, when you press for a 
discussion, he protests that he considers you mon- 
strously precipitate ! Now is not that a fair trans- 
lation ? Why really if we did not know Mr. Grat- 
tan, we should be almost tempted to think that he 
was quoting from the ministry. With the exception 
of one or two plain, downright, sturdy, unblushing 
bigots, who opposed you because you were Chris- 
tians, and declared they did so, this was the cant 
of every man who affected liberality. " Oh, I 
declare," say they* " they may not be cannibals, 
though they are Catholics, and I would be very 
glad to vote for them, but this is no time" " Oh 
no," says Bragge Bathurst, " it's no time. What ! 
in time of war ! Why it looks like bullying us !" 
Very well: next comes the peace, and what say 
out friends the Opposition? " Oh! I declare 
peace is no time, it looks so like persuading us." 
For my part, serious as the subject is, it affects 
me with the very same ridicule with which I see I 
have so unconsciously affected you. I will tell you a 
story of which it reminds me. It is told of the 
celebrated Charles Fox. Far be it from me, how- 
ever, to mention that name with levity. As he 



AT DUBLIN. 49 

was a great man, I revere him ; as he was a good 
man, I love him. He had as wise a head as ever 
paused to deliberate ; he had as sweet a tongue as 
ever gave the words of wisdom utterance ; and he 
had an heart so stamped with the immediate im- 
press of the Divinity, that its very errors might be 
traced to the excess of its benevolence. I had 
almost forgot the story. Fox was a man of genius 
— of course he was poor. Poverty is a reproach 
to no man ; to such a man as Fox, I think it was 
a pride ; for if he chose to traffic with his princi- 
ples ; if he chose to gamble with his conscience, 
how easily might he have been rich ? I guessed 
your answer. It would be hard indeed if you did 
not believe that in England talents might find a 
purchaser, who have seen in Ireland how easily a 
blockhead may swindle himself into preferment. Ju- 
venal says that the greatest misfortune attendant 
upon poverty is ridicule. Fox found out a greater 
— debt. The Jews called on him for payment. " Ah, 
my dear friends," says Fox, " I admit the principle; 
I owe you money, but what time is this, when I am 
going upon business" Just so our friends admit the 
principle; they owe you emancipation, but war's no 
time. Well, the Jews departed just as you did. They 
returned to the charge : " What ! cries Fox, is this 
a time, when I am engaged on an appointment ?" 
What! say our friends, is this a time when all the 
world's at peace. The Jews departed; but the end 
of it was, Fox, with his secretary, Mr. Hare, who was 
as much in debt as he was, shut themselves up in 
garrison. The Jews used to surround his habit- 



50 SPEECH 

ation at day-light, and poor Fox regularly put his 
head out of the window, with this question, " Gen- 
tlemen, are you ifor-hunting or i^are-hunting this 
morning?" His pleasantry mitigated the very 
Jews. " Well, well, Fox, now you have always ad- 
mitted the principle, but protested against the time 
— we will give you your own time, only just fix 
some final day for our repayment." — " Ah, my 
dear Moses," replies Fox, " now this is friendly. I 
will take you at your word ; I will fix a day, and 
as its to be a final day, what would you think of 
the day of judgment 7" — " That will be too busy 
a day with us." — " Well, well, in order to accom- 
modate all parties, let us settle it the day after" 
Thus it is, between the war inexpediency of 
Bragge Bathurst, and the peace inexpediency of 
Mr. Grattan, you may expect your emancipation 
bill pretty much about the time that Fox settled 
for the payment of his creditors. Mr. Grattan, 
however, though he scorned to take your sugges- 
tions, took the suggestions of your friends. " I 
have consulted," says he, " my right honourable 
friends !" Oh, all friends, all right honourable! 
Now this it is to trust the interests of a people into 
the hands of a party. You must know, in par- 
liamentary parlance, these right honourable friends 
mean a party. There are few men so contemp- 
tible, as not to have a party. The minister has 
his party. The opposition have their party. The 
Saints, for there are Saints in the House of Com- 
mons, lucus d non lucendo, — the saints have their 
party. Every one has his party. I had forgotten — 



AT DUBLIN*. 51 

Ireland lias no party. Such are the reasons, if 
reasons they can be called, which Mr. Grattan has 
given for the postponement of your question ; and 
I sincerely say, if they had come from any other 
man, I would not have condescended to have given 
them an answer. He is indeed reported to have 
said that he had others in reserve, which he did 
not think it necessary to detail. If those which 
he reserved were like those which he delivered, 
I do not dispute the prudence of his keeping them 
to himself; but as we have not the gift of pro- 
phecy, it is not easy for us to answer them, until 
he shall deign to give them to his constituents. 

Having dealt thus freely with the alleged rea- 
sons for the postponement, it is quite natural that 
you should require what my reasons are for urging 
the discussion. I shall give them candidly. They 
are at once so simple and explicit, it is quite im- 
possible that the meanest capacity amongst you 
should not comprehend them. I would urge the 
instant discussion, because discussion has always 
been of use to you ; because, upon every discus- 
sion you have gained converts out of doors ; and 
because, upon every discussion within the doors of 
Parliament, your enemies have diminished, and 
your friends have increased. Now, is not that a 
strong reason for continuing your discussions ? 
This may be assertion. Aye, but I will prove 
it. In order to convince you of the argument 
as referring to the country, I need but point to 
the state of the public mind now upon the subject, 
and that which existed in the memoiy of the 
youngest. I myself remember the blackest and 



t5£ speech 

the basest universal denunciations against your 
creed, and the vilest anathemas against any man 
who would grant you an iota. Now, every man 
affects to be liberal, and the only question with 
some is the time of the concessions ; with others, 
the extent of the concessions ; with many, the 
nature of the securities you should afford ; whilst 
a great multitude, in which I am proud to class 
myself, think that your emancipation should be 
immediate, universal, and unrestricted. Such has 
been the progress of the human mind out of doors, 
in consequence of the powerful eloquence, argu- 
ment, and policy elicited by those discussions 
which your friends now have, for the first time, 
found out to be precipitate. Now let us see what 
has been the effect produced within the doors of 
Parliament. For twenty years you were silent, 
and of course you were neglected. The conse- 
quence was most natural. Why should Parliament 
grant privileges to men who did not think those 
privileges worth the solicitation ? Then rose 
your agitators, as they are called by those bigots 
who are trembling at the effect of their arguments 
on the community, and who, as a matter of course, 
take every opportunity of calumniating tliem. Ever 
since that period your cause has been advancing. 
Take the numerical proportions in the House of 
Commons on each subsequent discussion. In 1805, 
the first time it was brought forward in the Im- 
perial legislature, and it was then aided by the 
powerful eloquence of Fox, there was a majority 
against even taking your claims into consideration, 
of no less a number than 212= It was an appalling 



AT DUBLIN. 53 

omen. In 1808, however, on the next discussion, 
that majority was diminished to 163. In 1810 it 
decreased to 104. In 1811 it dwindled to 64, and 
at length in 1812, on the motion of Mr. Canning, 
and it is not a little remarkable that the first suc- 
cessful exertion in your favour was made by an 
English member, your enemies fled the field, and 
you had the triumphant majority to support you of 
129 ! Now, is not this demonstration ? What be- 
comes now of those who say discussion has not 
been of use to you ? But I need not have resorted 
to arithmetical calculation. Men become ashamed 
of combating with axioms. Truth is omnipotent, 
and must prevail ; it forces its way with the fire 
and the precision of the morning sun-beam. Va- 
pours may impede the infancy of its progress ; 
but the very resistance that would check only con- 
denses and concentrates it, until at length it goes 
forth in the fulness of its meridian, all life and 
light and lustre — the minutest objects visible in 
its refulgence. You lived for centuries on the 
vegetable diet and eloquent silence of this Pytha- 
gorean policy ; and the consequence was, when you 
thought yourselves mightily dignified, and mightily 
interesting, the whole world was laughing at your 
philosophy, and sending its aliens to take possession 
of your birth-right. I have given you a good 
reason for urging your discussion, by having shown 
you that discussion has always gained you pro- 
selytes. But is it the time ? says Mr. Grattan. 
Yes, Sir, it is the time, peculiarly the time, unless 
indeed the great question of Irish liberty is to be 
reserved as a weapon in the hands of a party to wield 
e 3 



54} SPEECH 

against the weakness of the British minister. But 
why should I delude you by talking about time! 
Oh ! there wilj never be a time with Bigotry ! 
She has no head, and cannot think j she has no 
heart, and cannot feel j when she moves, it is in 
wrath ; when she pauses, it is amid ruin ; her 
prayers are curses, her communion is death, her 
vengeance is eternity, her decalogue is written in 
the blood of her victims ; and if she stoops for a 
moment from her infernal flight, it is upon some 
kindred rock to whet her vulture fang for keener 
rapine, and replume her wing for a more san- 
guinary desolation ! I appeal from this infernal, 
grave-stalled fury, I appeal to the good sense, to 
the policy, to the gratitude of England ; and I 
make my appeal peculiarly at this moment, when 
all the illustrious potentates of Europe are assem- 
bled together in the British capital, to hold the 
great festival of universal peace and universal 
emancipation. Perhaps when France, flushed 
with success, fired by ambition, and infuriated by 
enmity; her avowed aim an universal conquest, 
her means the confederated resources of the Con- 
tinent, her guide the greatest military genius a 
nation fertile in prodigies has produced — a man 
who seemed born to invest what had been regular, 
to defile what had been venerable, to crush what 
had been established, and to create, as if by a 
magic impulse, a fairy world, peopled by the 
paupers he had commanded into kings, and based 
by the thrones he had, crumbled in his caprices ; — 
perhaps when such a power, so led, so organised, 



AT DUBLIN. 55 

and so incited, was in its noon of triumph, the 
timid might tremble even at the change that would 
save, or the concession that would strengthen. 
But now, — her allies faithless, her conquests de- 
spoiled, her territory dismembered, her legions 
defeated, her leader dethroned, and her reigning 
prince our ally by treaty, our debtor by gratitude, 
and our inalienable friend by every solemn obli- 
gation of civilised society, — the objection is our 
strength, and the obstacle our battlement. Per- 
haps when the Pope was in the power of our 
enemy, however slender the pretext, bigotry might 
have rested on it. The inference was false as to 
Ireland, and it was ungenerous as to Rome. The 
Irish Catholic, firm in his faith, bows to the pontiff's 
spiritual supremacy, but he would spurn the pon- 
tiff's temporal interference. If, with the spirit of 
an earthly domination, he were to issue to-morrow 
his despotic mandate, Catholic Ireland with one 
voice would answer him : " Sire, we bow with 
reverence to your spiritual mission : the de- 
scendant of Saint Peter, we freely acknowledge 
you the head of our church, and the organ of 
our creed: but, Sire, if we have a church, we 
cannot forget that we also have a country; and 
when you attempt to convert your mitre into a 
crown, and your crozier into a sceptre, you de- 
grade the majesty of your high delegation, and 
grossly miscalculate upon our acquiescence. No 
foreign power shall regulate the allegiance which we 
owe to our sovereign ; it was the fault of our fathers 
that one Pope forged our fetters ; it will be our 
e 4 



56 SPEECH 

own, if we allow them to be rivetted by another." 
Such would be the answer of universal Ireland ; 
such was her answer to the audacious menial, who 
dared to dictate her unconditional submission to 
an act of Parliament which emancipated by penal- 
ties, and redressed by insult. But, Sir, it never 
would have entered into the contemplation of the 
Pope to have assumed such an authority. His 
character was a sufficient shield against the im- 
putation, and his policy must have taught him, 
that, in grasping at the shadow of a temporal 
power, he should but risk the reality of his eccle- 
siastical supremacy. Thus was Parliament doubly 
guarded against a foreign usurpation. The people 
upon whom it was to act deprecate its authority, 
and the power to which it was imputed abhors its 
ambition ; the Pope would not exert it if he could, 
and the people would not obey it if he did. Just 
precisely upon the same foundation rested the 
aspersions which were cast upon your creed. How 
did experience justify them? Did Lord Welling- 
ton find that religious faith made any difference 
amid the thunder of the battle ? Did the Spanish 
soldier desert his colours because his General 
believed not in the real presence ? Did the brave 
Portuguese neglect his orders to negotiate about 
mysteries? Or what comparison did the hero 
draw between the policy of England and the 
piety of Spain, when at one moment he led the 
heterodox legions to victory, and the very next 
was obliged to fly from his own native flag, waving 
defiance on the walls of Burgos, where the Irish 



AT DUBLIN. • 5/ 

exile planted and sustained it? What must he 
have felt when in a foreign land he was obliged to 
command brother against brother, to raise the 
sword of blood, and drown the cries of nature 
with the artillery of death ? What were the sen- 
sations of our hapless exiles, when they recognised 
the features of their long-lost country? when 
they heard the accents of the tongue they loved, 
or caught the cadence of the simple melody which 
once lulled them to sleep within a mother's arms, 
and cheered the darling circle they must behold 
no more ? Alas, how the poor banished heart 
delights in the memory that song associates ! He 
heard it in happier days, when the parents he 
adored, the maid he loved, the friends of his soul, 
and the green fields of his infancy were round 
him ; when his labours were illumined with the 
sun-shine of the heart, and his humble hut was a 
palace — for it was home. His soul is full, his eye 
suffused, he bends from the battlements to catch 
the cadence, when his death-shot, sped by a 
brother's hand, lays him in his grave — the victim 
of a code calling itself Christian ! Who shall say, 
heart-rending as it is, this picture is from fancy ? 
Has it not occurred in Spain ? May it not, at this 
instant, be acting in America? Is there any 
country in the universe, in which these brave 
exiles of a barbarous bigotry are not to be found 
refuting the calumnies that banished and rewarding 
the hospitality that received them ? Yet England, 
enlightened England, who sees them in every field 
of the old world and the new, defending the various 



58 SPEECH 

flags of every faith, supports the injustice of her 
exclusive constitution, by branding upon them 
the ungenerous accusation of an exclusive creed i 
England, the ally of Catholic Portugal, the ally of 
Catholic Spain, the ally of Catholic France, the 
friend of the Pope ! England, who seated a Ca- 
tholic bigot in Madrid ! who convoyed a Catholic 
Braganza to the Brazils! who enthroned a Ca- 
tholic Bourbon in Paris ! who guaranteed a Ca- 
tholic establishment in Canada! who gave a 
constitution to Catholic Hanover ! England, who 
searches the globe for Catholic grievances to re- 
dress, and Catholic Princes to restore, will not 
trust the Catholic at home, who spends his blood 
and treasure in her service ! ! Is this generous ? 
Is this consistent ? Is it just ? Is it even politic ? 
Is it the act of a wise country to fetter the ener- 
gies of an entire population ? Is it the act of a 
Christian country to do it in the name of God ? 
Is it politic in a government to degrade part of 
the body by which it is supported, or pious to 
make Providence a party to their degradation? 
There are societies in England for discounte- 
nancing vice j there are Christian associations 
for distributing the Bible ; there are volunteer 
missions for converting the heathen : but Ireland, 
the seat of their government, the stay of their 
empire, their associate by all the ties of nature 
and of interest ; how has she benefited by the 
Gospel of which they boast ? Has the sweet spirit 
of Christianity appeared on our plains iai the cha- 
racter of her precepts, breathing the air and robed 



AT DUBLIN. f)9 

in the beauties of the world to which she would 
lead us ; with no argument but love, no look but 
peace, no wealth but piety; her creed compre- 
hensive as the arch of heaven, and her charities 
bounded but by the circle of creation ? Or, has 
she been let loose amongst us, in form a fury, and 
in act a daemon, her heart festered with the fires 
of hell, her hands clotted with the gore of earth, 
withering alike in her repose and in her progress, 
her path apparent by the print of blood, and her 
pause denoted by the expanse of desolation ? Gos- 
pel of Heaven ! is this thy herald ? God of the 
universe ! is this thy hand-maid ? Christian of 
the ascendancy ! how would you answer the dis- 
believing infidel, if he asked you, should he estimate 
the Christian doctrine by the Christian practice ; 
if he dwelt upon those periods when the human 
victim writhed upon the altar of the peaceful 
Jesus, and the cross, crimsoned with his blood, 
became little better than a stake for the sacrifice 
of his votaries ; if he pointed to Ireland, where 
the word of peace was the war-whoop of destruction ; 
where the son was bribed against the father, and 
the plunder of the parent's property was made a 
bounty on the recantation of the parent's creed ; 
where the march of the human mind was stayed 
in his name who had inspired it with reason, and 
any effort to liberate a fellow-creature from his in- 
tellectual bondage was sure to be recompensed 
by the dungeon or the scaffold ; where ignorance 
was so long a legislative command, and piety a 
legislative crime j where religion was placed as a 



60 SPEECH 

barrier between the sexes, and the intercourse of 
nature was pronounced felony by law ; where 
God's worship was an act of stealth, and his mi- 
nisters sought amongst the savages of the woods 
that sanctuary which a nominal civilisation had 
denied them ; where at this instant conscience 
is made to blast every hope of genius, and every 
energy of ambition, and the Catholic who would 
rise to any station of trust must, in the face of 
his country, deny the faith of his fathers ; where 
the preferments of earth are only to be obtained 
by the forfeiture of Heaven ? 

" Unprized are her sons till they learn to betray, 

Undistinguish'd they live if they shame not their sires ; 
And the torch that would light them to dignity's way, 
Must be caught from the pile where their country expires !" 

How, let me ask, how would the Christian zealot 
droop beneath this catalogue of Christian qualifi- 
cations? But, thus it is, when sectarians differ 
on account of mysteries ; in the heat and acrimony 
of the causeless contest, religion, the glory of one 
world, and the guide of another, drifts from the 
splendid circle in which she shone, into the comet- 
maze of uncertainty and error. The code, against 
which you petition, is a vile compound of impiety 
and impolicy : impiety, because it debases in the 
name of God ; impolicy, because it disqualifies 
under pretence of government. If we are to 
argue from the services of Protestant Ireland, to 
the losses sustained by the bondage of Catholic 
Ireland, and I do not see why we should not, the 
state which continues such a system is guilty of 
15 



AT DUBLIN. 61 

little less than a political suicide. It matters little 
where the Protestant Irishman has been employed; 
whether with Burke wielding the senate with his 
eloquence, with Castlereagh guiding the cabinet 
by Ins counsels, with Barry enriching the arts by 
his pencil, with Swift adorning literature by his 
genius, with Goldsmith or with Moore softening 
the heart by their melody, or with Wellington 
chaining victory at his car, he may boldly chal- 
lenge the competition of the world. Oppressed 
and impoverished as our country is, every muse 
has cheered, and every art adorned, and every 
conquest crowned her. Plundered, she was not 
poor, for her character enriched ; attainted, she 
was not titleless, for her services ennobled; lite- 
rally outlawed into eminence and fettered into 
fame, the fields of her exile were immortalised by 
her deeds, and the links of her chain became de- 
corated by her laurels. Is this fancy, or is it fact ? 
Is there a department in the state in which Irish 
genius does not possess a 'predominance ? Is there 
a conquest which it does not achieve, or a dignity 
which it does not adorn ? At this instant, is there 
a country in the world to which England has not 
deputed an Irishman as her representative? She 
has sent Lord Moira to India, Sir Gore Ouseley 
to Ispahan, Lord Stuart to Vienna, Lord Castle- 
reagh to Congress, Sir Henry Wellesley to Madrid, 
Mr. Canning to Lisbon, Lord Strangford to the 
Brazils, Lord Clancarty to Holland, Lord Wel- 
lington to Paris — all Irishmen ! Whether it results 
from accident or from merit, can there be a more 



V% SPEECH 

cutting sarcasm on the policy of England ! Is it 
not directly saying to her, " Here is a country 
from one-fifth of whose people you depute the 
agents of your most august delegation, the re- 
maining four-fifths of which, by your odious 
bigotry, you incapacitate from any station of office 
or of trust !" It is adding all that is weak in im- 
policy to all that is wicked in ingratitude. What 
is her apology ? Will she pretend that the Deity 
imitates her injustice, and incapacitates the intel- 
lect as she has done the creed? After making 
Providence a pretence for her code, will she also 
make it a party to her crime, and arraign the 
universal spirit of partiality in his dispensations ? 
Is she not content with Him as a Protestant God, 
unless He also consents to become a Catholic 
daemon ? But, if the charge were true, if the 
Irish Catholic were imbruted and debased, Ire- 
land's conviction would be England's crime, and 
your answer to the bigot's charge shoidd be the 
bigot's conduct. What, then ! is this the result 
of six centuries of your government ? Is this the 
connection which you called a benefit to Ireland ? 
Have your protecting laws so debased them, that 
the very privilege of reason is worthless in their 
possession ? Shame ! oh, shame ! to the govern- 
ment where the people are barbarous ! The day 
is not distant when they made the education of a 
Catholic a crime, and yet they arraign the Catho- 
lic for ignorance ! The day is not distant when 
they proclaimed the celebration of the Catholic 
worship a felony, and yet they complain that the 



AT DUBLIN. (k; 

Catholic is not moral ! What folly ! Is it to be 
expected that the people are to emerge in a mo- 
ment from the stupor of a protracted degradation? 
There is not, perhaps, to be traced upon the map 
of national misfortune a spot so truly and so 
tediously deplorable as Ireland. Other lands, no 
doubt, have had their calamities. To the horrors 
of revolution, the miseries of despotism, the 
scourges of anarchy, they have in their turns been 
subject. But it has been only in their turns; the 
visitations of woe, though severe, have not been 
eternal ; the hour of probation, or of punishment, 
has passed away ; and the tempest, after having 
emptied the vial of its wrath, has given place to 
the serenity of the calm and of the sunshine. 
Has this been the case with respect to our miser- 
able country ? Is there, save in the visionary world 
of tradition — is there in the progress, either of 
record or recollection, one verdant spot in the 
desert of our annals where patriotism can find 
repose or philanthropy refreshment ? Oh, indeed, 
posterity will pause with wonder on the melan- 
choly page which shall pourtray the story of a 
people, amongst whom the policy of man has 
waged an eternal warfare with the providence of 
God, blighting into deformity all that was beau- 
teous, and into famine all that was abundant. I 
repeat, however, the charge to be false. The 
Catholic mind in Ireland has made advances 
scarcely to be hoped in the short interval of its 
partial emancipation. But what encouragement 
has the Catholic parent to educate his offspring ? 



64< SPEECH 

Suppose he sends his son, the hope of his pride 
and the wealth of his heart, into the army ; the 
child justifies his parental anticipation ; he is moral 
in his habits, he is strict in his discipline, he is 
daring in the field, and temperate at the board, 
and patient in the camp ; the first in the charge, 
the last in the retreat ; with an hand to achieve, 
and an head to guide, and a temper to conciliate ; 
he combines the skill of Wellington with the cle- 
mency of Caesar and the courage of Turenne — 
yet he can never rise — he is a Catholic ! — Take 
another instance. Suppose him at the bar. He 
has spent his nights at the lamp, and his days in 
the forum ; the rose has withered from his cheek 
mid the drudgery of form ; the spirit lias fainted 
in his heart mid the analysis of crime ; he has 
foregone the pleasures of his youth, and the asso- 
ciates of his heart, and all the fairy enchantments 
in which fancy may have wrapped him. Alas ! for 
what? Though genius flashed from his eye, and 
eloquence rolled from his lips ; though he spoke 
with the tongue of Tully, and argued with the 
learning of Coke, and thought with the purity of 
Fletcher, he can never rise — he is a Catholic ! 
Merciful God! what a state of society is this in 
which thy worship is interposed as a disqualifi- 
cation upon thy Providence ! Behold, in a word, 
the effects of the code against which you petition ; 
it disheartens exertion, it disqualifies merit, it 
debilitates the state, it degrades the Godhead, it 
disobeys Christianity, it makes religion an article 
of traffic, and its founder a monopoly ; and for 



AT DUBLIN. 



(tf 



ages it lias reduced a country, blessed with every 
beauty of nature and every bounty of Providence, 
to a state unparalleled under any constitution pro- 
fessing to be free, or any government pretending 
to be civilised. To justify this enormity, there is 
now no argument. Now is the time to concede 
with dignity that which was never denied without 
injustice. Who can tell how soon we may require 
all the zeal of our united population to secure our 
very existence? Who can argue upon the con- 
tinuance of this calm ? Have we not seen the 
labour of ages overthrown, and the whim of a day 
erected on its ruins ; establishments the most 
solid withering at a word, and visions the most 
whimsical realised at a wish ; crowns crumbled, 
discords confederated, kings become vagabonds, 
and vagabonds made kings at the capricious phren- 
,zy of a village adventurer ? Have we not seen 
the whole political and moral world shaking as 
with an earthquake, and shapes the most fantastic 
and formidable and frightful heaved into life by 
the quiverings of the convulsion ? The storm has 
passed over us ; England has survived it ; if she is 
wise, her present prosperity will be but the hand- 
maid to her justice ; if she is pious, the peril she 
has escaped will be but the herald of her expi- 
ation. Thus much have I said in the way of 
argument to the enemies of your question. Let 
me offer an humble opinion to its friends. The 
first and almost the sole request which an advo- 
cate would make to you is, to remain united j rely 

F 



66 SPEECH 

on it, a divided assault can never overcome a con- 
solidated resistance. I allow that an educated 
aristocracy are as an head to the people, without 
which they cannot think -, but then the people 
are as hands to the aristocracy, without which it 
cannot act. Concede, then, a little to even each 
other's prejudices ; recollect that individual sacri- 
fice is universal strength ; and can there be a 
nobler altar than the altar of your country ? This 
same spirit of conciliation should be extended 
even to your enemies. If England will not con- 
sider that a brow of suspicion is but a bad accom- 
paniment to an act of grace ; if she will not allow 
that kindness may make those friends whom even 
oppression could not make foes ; if she will not 
confess that the best security she can have from 
Ireland is by giving Ireland an interest in her 
constitution ; still, since her power is the shield of 
her prejudices, you should concede where you 
cannot conquer ; it is wisdom to yield when it has 
become hopeless to combat. 

There is but one concession which I would 
never advise, and which, were I a Catholic, I 
would never make. You will perceive that I 
allude to any interference with your clergy. That 
was the crime of Mr. Grattan's security bill. It 
made the patronage of your religion the ransom 
for your liberties, and bought the favour of the 
crown by the surrender of the church. It is a 
vicious principle, it is the cause of all your sor- 
rows. If there had not been a state-establishment 



AT DUBUN. 67 

there would not have been a Catholic bondage. 
Bv that incestuous conspiracy between the altar 
and the throne infidelity has achieved a more 
extended dominion than by all the sophisms of 
her philosophy, or all the terrors of her persecu- 
tion. It makes God's apostle a court-appendage, 
and God himself a court-purveyor ; it carves the 
cross into a chair of state, where, with grace on 
his brow and gold in his hand, the little perish- 
able puppet of this world's vanity makes Omnipo- 
tence a menial to its power, and Eternity a pander 
to its profits. Be not a party to it. As you have 
spurned the temporal interference of the Pope, 
resist the spiritual jurisdiction of the crown. As 
I do not think that you, on the one hand, could 
surrender the patronage of your religion to the 
King, without the most unconscientious compro- 
mise, so, on the other hand, I do not think the 
King ever eould conscientiously receive it. Sup- 
pose he receives it ; if he exercises it for the 
advantage of your church, he directly violates the 
coronation-oath which binds him to the exclusive 
interests of the Church of England; and if he 
does not intend to exercise it for your advantage, 
to what purpose does he require from you its 
surrender? But what pretence has England for 
this interference with your religion ? It was the 
religion of her most glorious aera, it was the reli- 
gion of her most ennobled patriots, it was the 
religion of the wisdom that framed her constitu- 
tion, it was the religion of the valour that achieved 
f 2 



68 SPEECH 

it, it would have been to this day the religion of 
her empire had it not been for the lawless lust of 
a murderous adulterer. What right has she to 
suspect your church? When her thousand sects 
were brandishing the fragments of their faith 
against each other, and Christ saw his garment, 
without a seam, a piece of patchwork for every 
mountebank who figured in the pantomime ; when 
her Babel temple rocked at every breath of her 
Priestleys and her Paynes, Ireland, proof against 
the menace of her power, was proof also against 
the perilous impiety of her example. But if as 
Catholics you should guard it, the palladium of 
your creed, not less as Irishmen should you prize 
it, the relick of your country. Deluge after deluge 
has desolated her provinces. The monuments of 
art which escaped the barbarism of one invader 
fell beneath the still more savage civilisation of 
another. Alone, amid the solitude, your temple 
stood like some majestic monument amid the de- 
sert of antiquity, just in its proportions, sublime 
in its associations, rich in the virtue of its saints, 
cemented by the blood of its martyrs, pouring 
forth for ages the unbroken series of its venerable 
hierarchy, and only the more magnificent from 
the ruins by which it was surrounded. Oh ! do 
not for any temporal boon betray the great prin- 
ciples which are to purchase you an eternity ! 
Here, from your very sanctuary, — here, with my 
hand on the endangered altars of your faith, in the 
name of that God, for the freedom of whose wor- 



AT DUBLIN. 69 

ship we are so nobly struggling, — I conjure you, let 
no unholy hand profane the sacred ark of your 
religion ; preserve it inviolate ; its light is " light 
from heaven ;" follow it through all the perils of 
your journey; and, like the fiery pillar of the cap- 
tive Israel, it will cheer the desert of your bondage, 
and guide to the land of your liberation ! 



r 8 



PETITION 

REFERRED TO IN THE PRECEDING SPEECH, 

DRAWN BY 

MR. PHILLIPS 

AT THE REQUEST OF 

THE ROMAN CATHOLICS 

OF 

IRELAND. 



To the Honourable the Commons of the United 
Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, in Par- 
liament assembled : 

The humble Petition of the Roman Catholics 
of Ireland, whose Names are undersigned 
on behalf of themselves, and others, pro- 
fessing the Roman Catholic Religion, 

SHEWETH, 

*T^HAT we, the Roman Catholic people of Ire- 
land, again approach the legislature with a 
statement of the grievances under which we la- 
bour, and of which we most respectfully, but at 



PETITION. 71 

the same time most firmly, solicit the effectual 
redress. Our wrongs are so notorious, and so 
numerous, that their minute detail is quite unne- 
cessary, and would indeed be impossible, were it 
deemed expedient. Ages of persecution on the 
one hand, and of patience on the other, sufficiently 
attest our sufferings and our submission. Priv- 
ations have been answered only by petition, indig- 
nities by remonstrance, injuries by forgiveness. 
It has been a misfortune to have suffered for the 
sake of our religion -, but it has also been a pride 
to have borne the best testimony to the purity of 
our doctrine, by the meekness of our endurance. 

We have sustained the power which spurned 
us ; we have nerved the arm which smote us ; we 
have lavished our strength, our talent, and our 
treasures, and buoyed up, on the prodigal effusion 
of our young blood, the triumphant Ark of Bri- 
tish Liberty. 

We approach, then, with confidence, an en- 
lightened legislature ; in the name of Nature, we 
ask our rights as men ; in the name of the Consti- 
tution, we ask our privileges as subjects ; in the 
name of God, we ask the sacred protection of 
unpersecuted piety as Christians. 

Are securities required of us ? We offer them — 
the best securities a throne can have — the affec- 
tions of a people. We offer faith that was never 
violated, hearts that were never corrupted, valour 
that never crouched. Every hour of peril has 
proved our allegiance, and every field of Europe 
exhibits its example. 

f 4 



72 PETITION. 

We abjure all temporal authority, except that 
of our Sovereign ; we acknowledge no civil pre- 
eminence, save that of our constitution ; and, for 
our lavish and voluntary expenditure, we only ask 
a reciprocity of benefits. 

Separating, as we do, our civil rights from our 
spiritual duties, we humbly desire that they may 
not be confounded. We " render unto Caesar 
the things that are Caesar's," but we must also 
" render unto God the things that are God's." 
Our church could not descend to claim a state- 
authority, nor do we ask for it a state-aggrandise- 
ment: — its hopes, its powers, and its pretensions, 
are of another world ; and, when we raise our 
hands most humbly to the State, our prayer is not, 
that the fetters may be transferred to the hands 
which are raised for us to Heaven. We would not 
erect a splendid shrine even to Liberty on the ruins 
of the Temple. 

In behalf, then, of five millions of a brave and 
loyal people, we call upon the legislature to anni- 
hilate the odious bondage which bows down the 
mental, physical, and moral energies of Ireland ; 
and, in the name of that Gospel which breathes 
charity towards all, we seek freedom of conscience 
for all the inhabitants of the British empire. 

May it therefore please this honourable House 
to abolish all penal and disabling laws, which in 
any manner infringe religious liberty, or restrict 
the free enjoyment of the sacred rights of con- 
science, within these realms. 

And your petitioners will ever pray. 



THE 

ADDRESS 

TO 

H. R. H. THE PRINCESS OF WALES : 

DRAWN BY 

MR. PHILIPS 

AT THE REQUEST OF 

THE ROMAN CATHOLICS 

OF 

IRELAND. 



May it please Your Royal Highness, 
*Y\jTE, the Roman Catholic people of Ireland, 
beg leave to offer our unfeigned congratu- 
lations on your providential escape from the con- 
spiracy which so lately endangered both your 
life and honour — a conspiracy, unmanly in its 
motives, unnatural in its object, and unworthy in 
its means — a conspiracy, combining so monstrous 
an union of turpitude and treason, that it is difficult 
to say, whether royalty would have suffered more 
from its success, than human nature has from its 
conception. Our allegiance is not less shocked 
at the infernal spirit, which would sully the diadem, 



74 ADDRESS. 

by breathing on its most precious ornament, the 
virtue of its wearer, than our best feelings are at 
the inhospitable baseness, which would betray the 
innocence of a female in a land of strangers ! ! 

Deem it not disrespectful, illustrious Lady, 
that, from a people proverbially ardent in the 
cause of the defenceless, the shout of virtuous con- 
gratulation should receive a feeble echo. Our 
harp has long been unused to tones of gladness, 
and our hills but faintly answer the unusual accent. 
Your heart, however, can appreciate the silence 
inflicted by suffering ; and ours, alas, feels but too 
acutely, that the commiseration is sincere which 
flows from sympathy. 

Let us hope that, when congratulating virtue 
in your royal person, on her signal triumph over 
the perjured, the profligate, and the corrupt, we 
may also rejoice in the completion of its conse- 
quences. Let us hope that the society of your 
only child again solaces your dignified retirement; 
and that, to the misfortune of being a widowed 
wife, is not added the pang of being a childless 
mother ! 

But if, Madam, our hopes are not fulfilled ; 
if, indeed, the cry of an indignant and unanimous 
people is disregarded ; console yourself with the 
reflection, that, though your exiled daughter may 
not hear the precepts of virtue from your lips, 
she may at least study the practice of it in your 
example. 



A 

SPEECH 

DELIVERED BY 

MR. PHILLIPS 

AT A PUBLIC DINNER GIVEN TO HIM 
BY THE 

FRIENDS OF CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY 

IN 

LIVERPOOL. 



"OELIEVE me, Mr. Chairman, I feel too sen- 
sibly the high and unmerited compliment you 
have paid me, to attempt any other return than 
the simple expression of my gratitude; to be just, 
I must be silent ; but though the tongue is mute, 
my heart is much more than eloquent. The kind- 
ness of friendship, the testimony of any class, 
however humble, carries with it no trifling grati- 
fication; but stranger as I am, to be so distin- 
guished in this great city, whose wealth is its least 
recommendation ; the emporium of commerce, 
liberality, and public spirit; the birth-place of 
talent ; the residence of integrity ; the field where 
freedom seems to have rallied the last allies of her 



% 



SPEECH 



cause, as if, with the noble consciousness ihat, 
though patriotism could not wreath the laurel 
round her brow, genius should at least raise it 
over her ashes ; to be so distinguished, Sir, and in 
such a place, does, I confess, inspire me with a 
vanity which even a sense of my unimportance 
cannot entirely silence. Indeed, Sir, the minis- 
terial critics of Liverpool were right. I have no 
claim to this enthusiastic welcome. But I cannot 
look upon this testimonial, so much as a tribute to 
myself, as an omen to that country with whose 
fortunes the dearest sympathies of my soul are 
intertwined. Oh yes-, I do foresee when she shall 
hear with what courtesy her most pretensionless 
advocate has been treated, how the same wind 
that wafts her the intelligence, will revive that 
name within her, which the blood of ages has not 
been able to extinguish. It may be a delusive 
hope, but I am glad to grasp at any phantom that 
flits across the solitude of that country's deso- 
lation. On this subject you can scarcely be igno- 
rant, for you have an Irishman resident amongst 
you, whom I am proud to call my friend ; whose 
fidelity to Ireland no absence can diminish ; who 
has at once the honesty to be candid, and the 
talent to be convincing. I need scarcely say I 
allude to Mr. Casey. I knew, Sir, the statue was 
too striking to require a name upon the pedestal. 
Alas, Ireland has little now to console her, except 
the consciousness of having produced such men. 
It would be a reasonable adulation in me to de- 
ceive you. Six centuries of base misgovernment, 



AT LIVERPOOL. 77 

of causeless, ruthless, and ungrateful persecution, 
have now reduced that country to a crisis, at 
which I know not whether the friend of humanity 
has most cause to grieve or to rejoice ; because I 
am not sure that the same feeling which prompts 
the tear at human sufferings, ought not to triumph 
in that increased infliction which may at length 
tire them out of endurance. I trust in God a 
change of system may in time anticipate the results 
of desperation ; but you may quite depend on it, 
a period is approaching when, if penalty does not 
pause in the pursuit, patience will turn short on 
the pursuer. Can you wonder at it ? Contemplate 
Ireland during any given period of England's rule, 
and what a picture does she exhibit ! Behold her 
created in all the prodigality of nature ; with a 
soil that anticipates the husbandman's desires ; 
with habours courting the commerce of the world ; 
with rivers capable of the most effective navigation; 
with the ore of every metal struggling through her 
surface ; with a people, brave, generous, and in- 
tellectual, literally forcing their way through the 
disabilities of their own country into the highest 
stations of every other, and well rewarding the 
policy that promotes them, by achievements the 
most heroic, and allegiance without a blemish. 
How have the successive governments of England 
demeaned themselves to a nation, offering such an 
accumulation of moral and political advantages ! 
See it in the state of Ireland at this instant ; in the 
universal bankruptcy that overwhelms her ; in the 
loss of her trade ; in the annihilation of her manu- 



78 SPEECH 

factures ; in the deluge of her debt ; in the divi- 
sions of her people; in all the loathsome oper- 
ations of an odious, monopolising, hypocritical 
fanaticism on the one hand, wrestling with the 
untiring but natural reprisals of an irritated popu- 
lation on the other! It required no common 
ingenuity to reduce such a country to such a situ- 
ation. But it has been done; man has conquered 
the beneficence of the Deity ; his harpy touch 
has changed the viands to corruption ; and that land, 
which you might have possessed in health and 
wealth and vigour, to support you in your hour of 
need, now writhes in the agonies of death, unable 
even to lift the shroud with which famine and 
fatuity try to encumber her convulsion. This is 
what I see a pensioned press denominates tran- 
quillity. Oh, woe to the land threatened with such 
tranquillity ; soUtudinem jaciunl, pacem appellant ; 
it is not yet the tranquillity of solitude ; it is not 
yet the tranquillity of death ; but if you would 
know what it is, go forth in the silence of creation, 
when every wind is hushed, and every echo mute, 
and all nature seems to listen in dumb and terri- 
fied and breathless expectation, go forth in such 
an hour, and see the terrible tranquillity by which 
you are surrounded ! How could it be otherwise ; 
when for ages upon ages invention has fatigued 
itself with expedients for irritation ; when, as 1 
have read with horror in the progress of my legal 
studies, the homicide of a " mere Irishman" was 
considered justifiable; and when his ignorance was 
the origin of all his crimes, his education was ro- 

12 



AT LIVERPOOL. 79 

hibited by Act of Parliament ! — when the people 
were worm-eaten by the odious vermin which a 
Church and State adultery had spawned ; when a 
bad heart and brainless head were the fangs by 
which every foreign adventurer and domestic 
traitor fastened upon office ; when the property of 
the native was but an invitation to plunder, and 
his non-acquiescence the signal for confiscation; 
when religion itself was made the odious pretence 
for every persecution, and the fires of hell were 
alternatively lighted with the cross, and quenched 
in the blood of its defenceless followers ! I speak 
of times that are passed : but can their recollec- 
tions, can their consequences be so readily era- 
dicated. Why, however, should I refer to periods 
that are distant ? Behold, at this instant, five 
millions of her people disqualified on account of 
their faith, and that by a country professing free- 
dom ! and that under a government calling itself 
Christian ! You (when I say You, of course I mean, 
not the high-minded people of England, but the men 
who misgovern us both) seem to have taken out a 
roving commission in search of grievances abroad, 
whilst you overlook the calamities at your own door, 
and of your own infliction. You traverse the ocean to 
emancipate the African ; you cross the line to con- 
vert the Hindoo ; you hurl your thunder against 
the savage Algerine ; but \your own brethren at 
home, who speak the same tongue, acknowledge the 
same King, and kneel to the same God, cannot 
get one visit from your itinerant humanity/ Oh, 



80 SPEECH 

such a system is almost too abominable for a 
name ; it is a monster of impiety, impolicy, ingra- 
titude, and injustice ! The pagan nations of an- 
tiquity scarcely acted on such barbarous principles. 
Look to ancient Rome, with her sword in one 
hand and her constitution in the other, healing the 
injuries of conquest with the embrace of brother- 
hood, and wisely converting the captive into the 
citizen. Look to her great enemy, the glorious 
Carthaginian, at the foot of the Alps, ranging his 
prisoners round him, and by the politic option of 
captivity or arms, recruiting his legions with the 
very men whom he had literally conquered into 
gratitude ! They laid their foundations deep in 
the human heart, and their success was propor- 
tionate to their policy. You complain of the 
violence of the Irish Catholic ; can you wonder he 
is violent ? It is the consequence of your own 
infliction — 

" The flesh will quiver where the pincers tear, 
The blood will follow where the knife is driven." 

Your friendship has been to him worse than hos- 
tility ; he feels its embrace but by the pressure of 
his fetters ! I am only amazed he is not more 
violent. He fills your exchequer, he fights your 
battles, he feeds your clergy from whom he de- 
rives no benefit, he shares your burdens, he shares 
your perils, he shares every thing except your pri- 
vileges ; can you 'wonder he is violent? No matter 
what his merit, no matter what his claims, no mat- 
ter what his services j he sees himself a nominal 



AT LIVERPOOL. 81 

subject, and a real slave; and his children, the 
heirs, perhaps of his toils, perhaps of his talents, 
certainly of his disqualifications — -c#?z you wonder 
he is violent ? He sees every pretended obstacle 
to his emancipation vanished ; Catholic Europe 
your ally, the Bourbon on the throne, the Emperor 
a captive, the Pope a friend, the aspersions on his 
faith disproved by his allegiance to you against, 
alternately, every Catholic potentate in Christen- 
dom, and he feels himself branded with hereditary 
degradation — can you 'wonder, then, that he is 
violent? He petitioned humbly; his tameness 
was construed into a proof of apathy. He peti- 
tioned boldly ; his remonstrance was considered 
as an impudent audacity. He petitioned in peace ; 
he was told it was not the time. He petitioned in 
war ; he was told it was not the time. A strange 
interval, a prodigy in politics, a pause between 
peace and war, which appeared to be just made 
for him, arose ; I allude to the period between the 
retreat of Louis and the restoration of Buonaparte; 
he petitioned then, and he was told it was not the 
time. Oh, shame ! shame I shame ! I hope he will 
petition no more to a parliament so equivocating. 
However, I am not sorry they did so equivocate, 
because I think they have suggested one common 
remedy for the grievances of both countries, and 
that remedy is, a Reform of that Parliament. 
Without that, I plainly see, there is no hope for 
Ireland, there is no salvation for England; they 
will act towards . you as they have done towards 
us j they will admit your reasoning, they will ad- 

G 



%% SPEECH 

mire your eloquence, and they will prove their 
sincerity by a strict perseverance in the impolicy 
you have exposed, and the profligacy you have de- 
precated. Look to England at this moment. To 
what a state have they not reduced her ! Over 
this vast island, for whose wealth the winds of 
Heaven seemed to blow, covered as she once was 
with the gorgeous mantle of successful agriculture, 
all studded over with the gems of art and manu- 
facture, there is now scarce an object but industry 
in rags, and patience in despair : the merchant 
without a ledger, the fields without a harvest, the 
shops without a customer, the Exchange deserted, 
and the Gazette crowded, form the most heart- 
rending comments on that nefarious system, in 
support of which, peers and contractors, stock- 
jobbers and sinecurists, in short, the whole trained, 
collared, pampered, and rapacious pack of minis- 
terial beagles, have been, for half a century, in the 
most clamorous and discordant uproar ! During 
all this misery how are the pilots of the state em- 
ployed ? Why, in feeding the bloated mammoth 
of sinecure! in weighing the farthings of some 
underling's salary ! in preparing Ireland for a gar- 
rison, and England for a poor-house ! in the struc- 
ture of Chinese palaces ! the decoration of dra- 
goons, and the erection of public buildings!!! Oh, 
it's easily seen we have a saint in the Exchequer ! 
he has studied Scripture to some purpose! the 
famishing people cry out for breads and the scrip- 
tural minister gives them stones i Such has been 
the result of the blessed Pitt system, which amid 



AT LIVERPOOL. 

oceans of blood, and 800 millions expenditure, 
has left you, after all your victories, a triumphant 
dupe, a trophied bankrupt. I have heard before 
of states ruined by the visitations of Providence, 
devastated by famine, wasted by fire, overcome by 
enemies ; but never until now did I see a state 
like England, impoverished by her spoils, and con- 
quered by her successes ! She has fought the fight 
of Europe; she has purchased all its coinable blood; 
she has subsidized all its dependencies in their own 
cause; she has conquered by sea, she has conquered 
by land ; she has got peace, and, of course, or the 
Pitt apostles would not have made peace, she has 
got her " indemnity for the past, and security for 
the future," and here she is, after all her vanity 
and all her victories, surrounded by desolation, 
like one of the pyramids of Egypt ; amid the gran- 
deur of the desert, full of magnificence and death, 
at once a trophy and a tomb ! The heart of any 
reflecting man must burn within him, when he 
thinks that the war thus sanguinary in its oper- 
ations, and confessedly ruinous in its expenditure, 
was even still more odious in its principle ! It 
was a war avowedly undertaken for the purpose of 
forcing France out of her undoubted right of 
choosing her own monarch ; a war which uprooted 
the very foundations of the English constitution ; 
which libelled the most glorious era in our national 
annals; which declared tyranny eternal, and an- 
nounced to the people, amid the thunder of artillery, 
that, no matter how aggrieved, their only allowable 
attitude was that of supplication ; which, when it 

Q 2 



84 



SPEECH 



told the French reformer of 1793, that his defeat 
was just, told the British reformer of 1688, his tri- 
umph was treason, and exhibited to history, the ter- 
rific farce of a Prince of the House of Brunswick, the 
creature of the Revolution, offering an human he- 
catomb upon the grave of James the Second ! ! 
What else have you done ? You have succeeded 
indeed in dethroning Napoleon, and you have 
dethroned a monarch, who, with all his imputed 
crimes and vices, shed a splendour around royalty, 
too powerful for the feeble vision of legitimacy 
even to bear. He had many faults ; I do not seek 
to palliate them. He deserted his principles ; I 
rejoice that he, has suffered. But still let us be 
generous even in our enmities. How grand was 
his march ! How magnificent his destiny ! Say 
what we will, Sir, he will be the land-mark of our 
times in the eye of posterity. The goal of other 
men's speed was his starting-post; crowns were 
his play-things, thrones his footstool ; he strode 
from victory to victory; his path was " a plane 
of continued elevations." Surpassing the boast 
of the too confident Roman, he but stamped upon 
the earth, and not only armed men, but states and 
dynasties, and arts and sciences, all that mind 
could imagine, or industry produce, started up, 
the creation of enchantment. He is fallen — as 
the late Mr. Whitbread said, " you made him, and 
he unmade himself ' — his own ambition was his 
glorious conqueror. He attempted, with a sublime 
audacity, to grasp the fires of Heaven, and his 
heathen retribution has been the vulture and the 



AT LIVERPOOL. 85 

rock ! ! I do not ask what you have gained bv it, 
because, in place of gaming any thing, you are 
infinitely Avorse than when you commenced the 
contest ! But what have you done for Europe ? 
What have you achieved for man? Have morals 
been ameliorated ? Has liberty been strengthened ? 
Has any one improvement in politics or philosophy 
been produced ? Let us sec how. You have re- 
stored to Portugal a Prince of whom we know 
nothing, except that, when his dominions were 
invaded, his people distracted, his crown in danger, 
and all that could interest the highest energies of 
man at issue, he left his cause to be combated by 
foreign bayonets, and fled with a dastard preci- 
pitation to the shameful security of a distant 
hemisphere ! You have restored to Spain a wretch 
of even worse than proverbial princely ingratitude ; 
who filled his dungeons, and fed his rack with the 
heroic remnant that braved war, and famine, and 
massacre beneath his banners ; who rewarded pa- 
triotism with the prison, fidelity with the torture, 
heroism with the scaffold, and piety with the In- 
quisition ; whose royalty was published by the 
signature of his death-warrants, and whose religion 
evaporated in the embroidering of petticoats for the 
Blessed Virgin ! You have forced upon France a 
family to whom misfortune could teach no mercy, 
or experience wisdom ; vindictive in prosperity, 
servile in defeat, timid in the field, vacillating in 
the cabinet ; suspicion amongst themselves, dis- 
content amongst their followers ; thefr memories 
tenacious but of the punishments they had pro- 
g 3 



86 SPEECH 

voked, their piety active but in subserviency to 
their priesthood, and their power passive but in 
the subjugation of their people ! Such are the 
dynasties you have conferred on Europe. In the 
very act, that of enthroning three individuals of 
the same family, you have committed in politics a 
capital error ; but Providence has countermined 
the ruin you were preparing ; and whilst the im- 
policy prevents the chance, their impotency pre- 
cludes the danger of a coalition. As to the rest 
of Europe, how has it been ameliorated ? What 
solitary benefit have the " deliverers" conferred ? 
They have partitioned the states of the feeble to 
feed the rapacity of the powerful ; and after having 
alternately adored and deserted Napoleon, they 
have wreaked their vengeance on the noble, but 
unfortunate fidelity that spurned their example. 
Do you want proofs ; look to Saxony, look to 
Genoa, look to Norway, but, above all, to Poland ! 
that speaking monument of regal murder and 
legitimate robbery — 

Oh ! bloodiest picture in the book of time — 
Sarmatia fell — unwept — without a crime ! 

Here was an opportunity to recompense that brave, 
heroic, generous, martyred, and devoted people ; 
here was an opportunity to convince Jacobinism 
that crowns and crimes were not, of course, co- 
existent, and that the highway rapacity of one 
generation might be atoned by the penitential re- 
tribution of another ! Look to Italy ; parcelled 
out to temporising Austria — the land of the muse, 
the historian, and the hero j the scene of every 



AT LIVERPOOL. S7 

classic recollection ; the sacred fane of antiquity, 
where the genius of the world weeps and worships, 
and the spirits of the past start into life at the in- 
spiring pilgrimage of some kindred Roscoe. You 
do yourselves honour by this noble, this natural en- 
thusiasm. Long may you enjoy the pleasure of 
possessing, never can you lose the pride of having 
produced the scholar without pedantry, the patriot 
without reproach, the Christian without superstition, 
the man without a blemish ! It is a subject I could 
dwell on with delight for ever. How painful our 
transition to the disgusting path of the deliverers. 
Look to Prussia, after fruitless toil and wreathless 
triumphs, mocked with the promise of a visionary 
constitution. Look to France, chained and plun- 
dered, weeping over the tomb of her hopes and 
her heroes. Look to England, eaten by the cancer 
of an incurable debt, exhausted by poor-rates, 
supporting a civil list of near a million and a half, 
annual amount, guarded by a standing army of 
149>000 men, misrepresented by a House of Com- 
mons, 90 of whose members in places and pensions 
derive 200,000/. in yearly emoluments from the 
minister, mocked with a military peace, and girt 
with the fortifications of a war-establishment! 
Shades of heroic millions, these are thy achieve- 
ments ! Monster of Legitimacy, this is thy con- 
summation ! ! ! The past is out of power ; it is 
high time to provide against the future. Retrench- 
ment and reform are now become not only expe- 
dient for our prosperity, but necessary to our very 
existence. Can any man of sense say that the 

G 4f 



SPEECH 



present system should continue ? What ! when 
war and peace have alternately thrown every 
family in the empire into mourning and poverty, 
shall the fattened tax-gatherer extort the starving 
manufacturer's last shilling, to swell the unmerited 
and enormous sinecure of some wealthy pauper ? 
Shall a borough-mongering faction convert what 
is misnamed the National Representation into a 
mere instrument for raising the supplies which are 
to gorge its own venality ? Shall the mock digni- 
taries of Whiggism and Toryism lead their hungry 
retainers to contest the profits of an alternate 
ascendency over the prostrate interest of a too 
generous people? These are questions which I 
blush to ask, which I shudder to think must be 
either answered by the parliament or the people. 
Let our rulers prudently avert the interrogation. 
We live in times when the slightest remonstrance 
should command attention, when the minutest 
speck that merely dots the edge of the political 
horizon, may be the car of the approaching spirit 
of the storm ? Oh ! they are times whose omen 
no fancied security can avert ; times of the most 
awful and portentous admonition. Establishments 
the most solid, thrones the most ancient, coali- 
tions the most powerful, have crumbled before our 
eyes j and the creature of a moment robed, and 
crowned, and sceptered, raised his fairy creation 
on their ruins ! The warning has been given ; 
may it not have been given in vain ! 

I feel, Sir, that the magnitude of the topics I 
have touched, and the imminency of the perils 



AT LIVERPOOL. 89 

which seem to surround us, have led me far be- 
yond the limits of a convivial meeting. I see I 
have my apology in your indulgence — but I can- 
not prevail on myself to trespass farther. Accept, 
again, Gentlemen, my most grateful acknowledg- 
ments. Never, never can I forget this day : in private 
life it shall be the companion of my solitude ; and 
if, in the caprices of that fortune which will at 
times degrade the high and dignify the humble, 
I should hereafter be called to any station of 
responsibility, I think I may ' at least fearlessly 
promise the friends who thus crowd around me, 
that no act of mine shall ever raise a blush at the 
recollection of their early encouragement. I hope, 
however, the benefit of this day will not be con- 
fined to the humble individual you have sohonoured: 
I hope it will cheer on the young aspirants after 
virtuous fame in both our countries, by proving to 
them, that however, for the moment, envy, or 
ignorance, or corruption, may depreciate them, 
there is a reward in store for the man who thinks 
with integrity and acts with decision. Gentlemen, 
you wall add to the obligations you have already 
conferred, by delegating to me the honour of pro- 
posing to you the health of a man, whose virtues 
adorn, and whose talents powerfully advocate our 
i?ause ; I mean the health of your worthy Chair- 
man, Mr. Shepherd. 



SPEECH 

OF 

MR. PHILLIPS 



THE CASE OF GUTHRIE ». STERNE, 

DELIVERED 

IN THE COUJLT OF COMMON PLEAS, 

DUBLIN. 



My Lord, and Gentlemen, 

TN this case I am of counsel for the plaintiff, who 
A has deputed me, with the kind concession of 
my much more efficient colleagues, to detail to 
you the story of his misfortunes. In the course 
of a long friendship which has existed between 
us, originating in mutual pursuits, and cemented 
by our mutual attachments, never, until this in- 
stant, did I feel any thing but pleasure in the 
claims which it created, or the duty which it 
imposed. In selecting me, however, from this 
bright array of learning and cf eloquence, I can- 
not help being pained at thl* kindness of a par- 
tiality which forgets its interest in the exercise of 

16 



SPEECH. 91 

its affection, and confides the task of practised wis- 
dom to the uncertain guidance of youth and inex- 
perience. He has thought, perhaps, that truth 
needed no set phrase of speech ; that misfortune 
should not veil the furrows which its tears had 
burned ; or hide, under the decorations of an art- 
ful drapery, the heart-rent heavings with which 
its bosom throbbed. He has surely thought that, 
by contrasting mine with the powerful talents 
selected by his antagonist, he was giving you a 
proof that the appeal he made was to your reason, 
not to your feelings — to the integrity of your 
hearts, not the exasperation of your passions. Hap- 
pily however for him, happily for you, happily 
for the country, happily for the profession, on 
subjects such as this, the experience of the oldest 
amongst us is but slender ; deeds such as this are 
not indigenous to an Irish soil, or naturalised be- 
neath an Irish climate. We hear of them, indeed, 
as we do of the earthquakes that convulse, or the 
pestilence that infects, less favoured regions ; but 
the record of the calamity is only read with the 
generous scepticism of innocence, or an involun- 
tary thanksgiving to the Providence that has pre- 
served us. No matter how we may have graduated 
in the scale of nations ; no matter with what wreatli 
we may have been adorned, or what blessings we may 
have been denied ; no matter what may have been 
our feuds, our follies, or our misfortunes ; it has at 
least been universally conceded, that our hearths 
were the home of the domestic virtues, and that 
love, honour, andconjugal fidelity, were the dear and 



92 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

indisputable deities of our household : around the 
fire-side of the Irish hovel hospitality circumscribed 
its sacred circle ; and a provision to punish cre- 
ated a suspicion of the possibility of its violation. 
But of all the ties that bound — of all the bounties 
that blessed her — Ireland most obeyed, most loved, 
most reverenced, the nuptial contract. She saw it 
the gift of Heaven, the charm of earth, the joy of 
the present, the promise of the future, the inno- 
cence of enjoyment, the chastity of passion, the 
sacrament of love : the slender curtain that shades 
the sanctuary of her marriage-bed, has in its pu- 
rity the splendour of the mountain-snow, and for 
its protection the texture of the mountain-adamant. 
Gentlemen, that national sanctuary has been in- 
vaded ; that venerable divinity has been violated ; 
and its tenderest pledges torn from their shrine, 
by the polluted rapine of a kindless, heartless, 
prayerless, remorseless adulterer ! To you — re- 
ligion defiled, morals insulted, law despised, public 
order foully violated, and individual happiness 
wantonly wounded, make their melancholy appeal. 
You will hear the facts with as much patience as 
indignation will allow — I will, myself ', ask of you 
to adjudge them with as much mercy as justice 
will admit. 

The Plaintiff in this case is John Guthrie ; by 
birth, by education, by profession, by better than 
all, by practice and by principles, a gentleman. 
Believe me, it is not from the common-place of 
advocacy, or from the blind partiality of friend- 
ship, that I say of him, that whether considering 



GUTHRIE V. STERNE. 93 

the virtues that adorn life, or the blandishments 

that endear it, he ha* few superiors. Surely, if a 
spirit that disdained dishonour, if a heart that 
knew not guile, if a life above reproach, and a 
character beyond suspicion, could have been a 
security against misfortunes, his lot must have 
been happiness. I speak in the presence of that 
profession to which he was an ornament, and with 
whose members his manhood has been familiar ; 
and I say of him, with a confidence that defies 
refutation, that, whether we consider him in his 
private or his public station, as a man or as a law- 
yer, there never breathed that being less capable 
of exciting enmity towards himself, or of offering, 
even by implication, an offence to others. If he 
had a fault, it was, that, above crime, he was above 
suspicion j and to that noblest error of a noble 
nature he has fallen a victim. Having spent his 
youth in the cultivation of a mind which must 
have one day led him to eminence, he became a 
member of the profession by which I am surrounded. 
Possessing, as he did, a moderate independence, 
and looking forward to the most flattering pros- 
pects, it was natural for him to select amongst the 
other sex, some friend who should adorn his for- 
tunes, and deceive his toils. He found such a 
friend, or thought he found her, in the person of 
Miss Warren, the only daughter of an eminent 
solicitor. Young, beautiful, and accomplished, she 
was " adorned with all that earth or heaven could 
bestow to make her amiable." Virtue never found 
a fairer temple ; beauty never veiled ti purer sane- 



94 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

tuary : the graces of her mind retained the ad- 
miration which her beauty had attracted, and the 
eye, which her charms fired, became subdued and 
chastened in the modesty of their association. She 
was in the dawn of life, with all its fragrance round 
her, and yet so pure, that even the blush, which 
sought to hide her lustre, but disclosed the vestal 
deity that burned beneath it. No wonder an ador- 
ing husband anticipated all the joys this world 
could give him ; no wonder the parental eye, 
which beamed upon their union, saw, in the per- 
spective, an old age of happiness, and a posterity 
of honour. Methinks I see them at the sacred 
altar, joining those hands which Heaven com- 
manded none should separate, repaid for many a 
pang of anxious nurture by the sweet smile of filial 
piety ; and in the holy rapture of the rite, wor- 
shipping the power that blessed their children, 
and gave them hope their names should live here- 
after. It was virtue's vision! None but fiends 
could envy it. Year after year confirmed the an- 
ticipation ; four lovely children blessed their union. 
Nor was their love the summer-passion of prospe- 
rity ; misfortune proved, afflictions chastened it : 
before the mandate of that mysterious Power which 
will at times despoil the paths of innocence, to de- 
corate the chariot of triumphant villany, my client 
had to bow in silent resignation. He owed his 
adversity to the benevolence of his spirit ; he 
" went security for friends ;" those friends de- 
ceived him, and he was obliged to seek in other 
lauds, that safe asylum which his own denied him. 



CI'THRTE V. STERNE. 95 

He was glad to accept an offer of professional 
business in Scotland during his temporary embar- 
rassment. With a conjugal devotion, Mrs. Guthrie 
accompanied him ; and in her smile the soil of a 
stranger was a home, the sorrows of adversity 
were dear to him. During their residence in 
Scotland, a period of about a year, you will find 
they lived as they had done in Ireland, and as 
they continued to do until this calamitous occur- 
rence, in a state of uninterrupted happiness. You 
shall hear, most satisfactorily, that their domestic 
life was unsullied and undisturbed. Happy at 
home, happy in a husband's love, happy in her 
parents' fondness, happy in the children she had 
nursed, Mrs. Guthrie carried into every circle — 
and there was no circle in which her society was 
not courted — that cheerfulness which never was 
a companion of guilt, or a stranger to innocence. 
My client saw her the pride of his family, the 
favourite of his friends — at once the organ and 
ornament of his happiness. His ambition awoke, 
his industry redoubled ; and that fortune, which, 
though for a season it may frown, never totally 
abandons probity and virtue, had begun to smile 
on him. He was beginning to rise in the ranks 
of his competitors, and rising with such a cha- 
racter, that emulation itself rather rejoiced than 
envied. It was at this crisis, in this, the noon 
of his happiness, and day-spring of his fortune, 
that, to the ruin of both, the Defendant became 
acquainted with his family. With the serpent's 
wile, and the serpent's wickedness, he stole into 



96 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

the Eden of domestic life, poisoning all thai 
pure, polluting all that was lovely, defying God, 
destroying man ; a demon in the disguise of vir- 
tue, a herald of hell in the paradise of innocence. 
His name, Gentlemen, is William Peter Baker 
Dunstanville Sterne : one would think he had 
epithets enough, without adding to them the title 
of Adulterer. Of his character I know but little, 
and I am sorry that I know so much. If I am in- 
structed rightly, he is one of those vain and vapid 
coxcombs, whose vices tinge the frivolity of their 
follies with something of a more odious character 
than ridicule — with just head enough to contrive 
crime, but not heart enough to feel for its conse- 
quences ; one of those fashionable insects, that 
folly has painted, and fortune plumed, for the 
annoyance of our atmosphere ; dangerous alike in 
their torpidity and their animation ; infesting where 
they fly, and poisoning where they repose. It was 
through the introduction of Mr. Fallon, the son of 
a most respectable lady, then resident in Temple- 
street, and a near relative of Mr. Guthrie, that the 
Defendant and this unfortunate woman first be- 
came acquainted: to such an introduction the 
shadow of a suspicion could not possibly attach. 
Occupied himself in his professional pursuits, my 
client had little leisure for the amusement of 
society : however, to the protection of Mrs. Fallon, 
her son, and daughters, moving in the first circles, 
unstained by any possible imputation, he without 
hesitation intrusted all that was dear to him. 
No suspicion could be awakened as to any man to 



GUTHRIE V. STERNE, 9? 

whom such a female as Mrs. Fallon permitted an 
intimacy with her daughters ; while at her house 
then, and at the parties which it originated, the 
defendant and Mrs. Guthrie had frequent oppor- 
tunities of meeting. Who could have suspected, 
that, under the very roof of virtue, in the presence 
of a venerable and respected matron, and of that 
innocent family, whom she had reared up in the 
sunshine of her example, the most abandoned pro- 
fligate could have plotted his iniquities ! Who 
would not rather suppose, that, in the rebuke of 
such a presence, guilt would have torn away the 
garland from its brow, and blushed itself into 
virtue. But the depravity of this man was of no 
common dye : the asylum of innocence was se- 
lected only as the sanctuary of his crimes ; and 
the pure and the spotless chosen as his associates, 
because they would be more unsuspected subsi- 
diaries to his wickedness. Nor were his manner 
and his language less suited than his society to the 
concealment of his objects. If you believed him- 
self, the sight of suffering affected his nerves ; the 
bare mention of immorality smote upon his con- 
science ; an intercourse with the continental courts 
had refined his mind into a painful sensibility to 
the barbarisms of Ireland! and yet an internal 
tenderness towards his native land so irresistibly 
impelled him to improve it by his residence, that 
he was a hapless victim to the excess of his feel- 
ings ! — the exquisiteness of his polish ! — and 
the excellence of his patriotism! His English 
estates, he said, amounted to about 10,000/. 
ii 



98 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

a-year ; and he retained in Ireland only a trifling 
30001. more, as a kind of trust for the necessities 
of its inhabitants ! — In short, according to his own 
description, he was in religion a saint, and in 
morals a stoic 1 — a sort of wandering philanthro- 
pist ! making, like the Sterne who, he confessed, had 
the honour of his name and his connection, a Sen- 
timental Journey in search of objects over whom his 
heart might weep, and his sensibility expand itself! 

How happy it is, that, of the philosophic pro- 
fligate only retaining the vices and the name, his 
rashness has led to the arrest of crimes, which he 
had all his turpitude to commit, without any of 
his talents to embellish. 

It was by arts such as I have alluded to — by pre- 
tending the most strict morality, the most sensitive 
honour, the most high and undeviating principles of 
virtue, — that the defendant banished every suspicion 
of his designs. As far as appearances went, he was 
exactly what he described himself. His pretensions 
to morals he supported by the most reserved and 
respectful behaviour : his hand was lavish in the dis- 
tribution of his charities ; and a splendid equipage, 
a numerous retinue, a system of the most profuse 
and prodigal expenditure, left no doubt as to the 
reality of his fortune. Thus circumstanced, he 
found an easy admittance to the house of Mrs. 
Fallon, and there he had many opportunities of 
seeing Mrs. Guthrie ; for, between his family and 
that of so respectable a relative as Mrs. Fallon, my 
client had much anxiety to increase the connec- 
tion. They visited together some of the public 



rrrTiiRiE v. sterne. 99 

amusements ; they partook of some of the fetes in 
the neighbourhood of the metropolis ; but upon 
every occasion, Mrs. Guthrie was accompanied by 
her own mother, and by the respectable females of 
Mrs. Fallon's family. I say, upon every occasion : 
and I challenge them to produce one single instance 
of those innocent excursions, upon which the 
slanders of an interested calumny have been let 
loose, in which this unfortunate lady was not ma- 
tronized by her female relatives, and those some 
of the most spotless characters in society. Be- 
tween Mr. Guthrie and the defendant, the ac- 
quaintance was but slight. Upon one occasion 
alone they dined together ; it was at the house of 
the plaintiff's father-in-law ; and, that you may 
have some illustration of the defendant's cha- 
ra€ter, I shall briefly instance his conduct at this 
dinner. On being introduced to Mr. Warren, he 
apologised for any deficiency of etiquette in his 
visits, declaring that he had been seriously occu- 
pied in arranging the affairs of his lamented 
father, who, though tenant for life, had contracted 
debts to an enormous amount. He had already 
paid upwards of 10,000/. which honour and not 
law compelled him to discharge ; as, sweet soul ! 
he could not bear that any one should suffer un- 
justly by his family ! His subsequent conduct was 
quite consistent with this hypocritical preamble : 
at dinner, he sat at a distance from Mrs. Guthrie ; 
expatiated to her husband upon matters of mora- 
lity ; entering into a high-flown panegyric on the 
virtues of domestic life, and the comforts of con- 



100 SPEECH IN THE CASE Of 

nubial happiness. In short, had there been any 
idea of jealousy, his manner would have banished 
it; and the mind must, have been worse than 
sceptical, which would refuse its credence to his 
surface morality, Gracious God ! when the heart 
once admits guilt as its associate, how every na- 
tural emotion flies before it! Surely, surely, here 
was a scene to reclaim, if it were possible, this re- 
morseless befendant — admitted to her father's 
table, under the shield of hospitality, he saw a 
young and lovely female, surrounded by her pa- 
rents, her husband, and her children ; the prop of 
those parents' age ; the idol of that husband's 
love ; the anchor of those children's helplessness ; 
the sacred orb of their domestic circle ; giving 
their smile its light, and their bliss its being ; 
robbed of whose beams the little lucid world of 
their home must become chill, uncheered, and 
colourless for ever. He saw them happy, he saw 
them united ; blessed with peace, and purity, and 
profusion ; throbbing with sympathy and throned 
in love ; depicting the innocence of infancy, and 
the joys of manhood, before the venerable eye of 
age, as if to soften the farewell of one world by 
the pure and pictured anticipation of a better. 
Yet, even there, hid in the very sun-beam of that 
happiness, the demon of its destined desolation 
larked. Just Heaven ! of what materials was that 
heart composed, which could meditate coolly on 
the murder of such enjoyments ; which innocence 
could not soften, nor peace propitiate, nor hos- 
pitality appease ; but which, in the very beam and 



GUTHRIE V. STERNE. 101 

bosom of its benefaction, warmed and excited it- 
self into a more vigorous venom ? Was there no 
sympathy in the scene? Was there no remorse 
at the crime ? Was there no horror at its conse- 
quences ? 

" Were honour, virtue, conscience, all exil'd ! 
Was there no pity, no relenting ruth, 
To shew the parents fondling o'er their child. 
Then paint the ruin'd pair and their distraction wild !" 

Burns. 

No ! no ! He was at that instant planning their 
destruction ; and, even within four short days, he 
deliberately reduced those parents to childishness, 
that husband to widowhood, those smiling infants 
to anticipated orphanage, and that peaceful, hospit- 
able, confiding family, to helpless, hopeless, irreme- 
diable ruin! 

Upon the first day of the ensuing July, Mr* 
Guthrie was to dine with the Connaught bar, at 
the hotel of Portobello. It is a custom, I am told, 
with the gentlemen of that association to dine 
together previous to the circuit ; of course my 
client could not have decorously absented himself. 
Mrs. Guthrie appeared a little feverish, and he re- 
quested that, on his retiring, she would compose 
herself to rest ; she promised him she would ; and 
when he departed, somewhat abruptly, to put some 
letters in the post-office, she exclaimed, " What ! 
John, are you going to leave me thus ?" He re- 
turned, and she kissed him. They seldom parted, 
even for any time, without that token of affection. 
I am thus minute, Gentlemen, that you may see, 
up to the last moment, what little cause the hus- 
ii 3 



102 SPEECH m THE CASE OF 

band had for suspicion, and how impossible it was 
for him to foresee a perfidy which nothing short of 
infatuation could have produced. He proceeded 
to his companions with no other regret than that 
necessity, for a moment, forced him from a home, 
which the smile of affection had never ceased to 
endear to him. After a day, however, passed, as 
such a day might have been supposed to pass, in 
the flow of soul, and the philosophy of pleasure, 
he returned home to share his happiness with her, 
without whom no happiness ever had been perfect. 
Alas ! he was never to behold her more ! Imagine, 
if you can, the phrenzy of his astonishment, in 
being informed by Mrs. Porter, the daughter of 
the former landlady, that about two hours before, 
she had attended Mrs. Guthrie to a confectioner's 
shop ; that a carriage had drawn up at the corner 
of the street, into which a gentleman, whom she 
recognised to be a Mr. Sterne, had handed her, 
and they instantly departed. I must tell you, 
there is every reason to believe, that this woman 
was the confidant of the conspiracy. What a pity 
that the object of that guilty confidence had not 
something of humanity ; that, as a female, she did 
not feel for the character of her sex ; that, as a 
mother, she did not mourn over the sorrows of a 
helpless family ! What pangs might she not have 
spared ? My client could hear no more : even at 
the dead of night he rushed into the street, as if 
in its own dark hour he could discover guilt's re- 
cesses. In vain did he awake the peaceful family 
of the horror-struck Mrs. Fallon ; in vain with the 



GUTHRIE V. STERNE. 103 

parents of the miserable fugitive, did lie mingle 
the tears of an impotent distraction ; in vain, a 
miserable maniac, did he traverse the silent streets 
of the metropolis, affrighting virtue from its slum- 
ber, with the spectre of its own ruin. I will net 
harrow you with its heart-rending recital. Eut 
imagine you see him, when the day had dawned, 
returning wretched to his deserted dwelling ; see- 
ing in every chamber a memorial of his loss, and 
hearing every tongueless object eloquent of his 
woe. Imagine you see him, in the reverie of his 
grief, trying to persuade himself it was all a vision, 
and awakened only to the horrid truth by his 
helpless children asking him for their mother! — 
Gentlemen, this is not a picture of the fancy ; it 
literally occurred : there is something less of 
romance in the reflection, which his children 
awakened in the mind of their afflicted father ; 
he ordered that they should be immediately ha- 
bited in mourning. How rational sometimes are 
the ravings of insanity ! For all the purposes of 
maternal life, poor innocents ! they have no 
mother ; her tongue no more can teach, her hand 
no more can tend them; for them there is not 
" speculation in her eyes •" to them her life is 1 
something worse than death ; as if the awful 
grave had yawned her forth, she moves before 
them, shrouded all in sin, the guilty burden of 
its peaceless sepulchre. Better, far better, their 
little feet had followed in her funeral, than the 
hour which taught her value, should reveal her 
vice — mourning her loss, they might have blessed 

H 4r 



104< SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

her memory ; and shame need not have rolled its 
fires into the fountain of their sorrow. 

As soon as his reason became sufficiently col- 
lected, Mr. Guthrie pursued the fugitives: he 
traced them successively to Kildare, to Carlow, 
Waterford, Milfordhaven, on through Wales, and 
finally to Ilfracombe, in Devonshire, where the 
clue was lost. I am glad that, in this rout and 
restlessness of their guilt, as the crime they perpe- 
trated was foreign to our soil, they did not make 
that soil the scene of its habitation. I will not 
follow them through this joyless journey, nor 
brand by my record the unconscious scene of its 
pollution. But philosophy never taught, the pulpit 
never enforced, a more imperative morality than 
the itinerary of that accursed tour promulgates. 
Oh ! if there be a maid or matron in this island, 
balancing between the alternative of virtue and of 
crime, trembling between the hell of the seducer 
and the adulterer, and the heaven of the parental 
and the nuptial home, let her pause upon this one 
out of the many horrors I could depict, — and be 
converted. I will give you the relation in the 
very words of my brief; I cannot improve upon 
the simplicity of the recital : 

" On the 7th of July they arrived at Milford ; 
the captain of the packet dined with them, and 
was astonished at the magnificence of her dress." 
(Poor wretch ! she was decked and adorned for 
the sacrifice !) " The next day they dined alone. 
Towards evening, the housemaid, passing near 
their chamber, heard Mr. Sterne scolding, and. 



GUTHRIE V. STERNE. 107 

apparently beating her! In a short time aftei, 
Mrs. Guthrie rushed out of her chamber into the 
drawing-room, and throwing herself in agony upon 
the sola, she exclaimed, " Oh! what an unhappy 
wretch I am ! — / left my home, where I was happy, 
too happy, seduced by a man who has deceived me. 
My poor husband ! my dear children ! Oh ! if they 
would even let my little William live with me! — it 
would be some consolation to my broken heart 1" 

" Alas ! nor children more can she behold, 
Nor friends, nor sacred home." 

Well might she lament over her fallen fortunes ! 
well might she mourn over the memory of days 
when the sun of heaven seemed to rise but for her 
happiness ! well might she recal the home she had 
endeared, the children she had nursed, the hapless 
husband, of whose life she was the pulse ! But 
one short week before, this earth could not reveal 
a lovelier vision : — Virtue blessed, affection fol- 
lowed, beauty beamed on her ; the light of every 
eye, the charm of every heart, she moved along in 
cloudless chastity, cheered by the song of love, 
and circled by the splendours she created ! Be- 
hold her now, the loathsome refuse of an adulterous 
bed ; festering in the very infection of her crime ; 
the scoff and scorn of their unmanly, merciless, in- 
human author? But thus it ever is with the 
votaries of guilt ; the birth of their crime is the 
death of their enjoyment ; and the wretch who 
flings his offering on its altar, falls an immediate 
victim to the flame of his devotion. I am glad it 



106 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

is so ; it is a wise, retributive dispensation ; it 
bears the stamp of a preventive Providence. I 
rejoice it is so, in the present instance, first, because 
this premature infliction must ensure repentance in 
the wretched sufferer ; and next, because, as this 
adulterous fiend has rather acted on the suggestions 
of his nature than his shape, by rebelling against 
the finest impulse of man, he has made himself an 
outlaw from the sympathies of humanity. — Why 
should he expect that charity from you, which he 
would not spare even to the misfortunes he had 
inflicted ? For the honour of the form in which 
he is disguised, I am willing to hope he was so 
blinded by his vice, that he did not see the full 
extent of those misfortunes. If he had feelings 
capable of being touched, it is not to the faded 
victim of her own weakness, and of his wickedness, 
that I would direct them. There is something in 
her crime which affrights charity from its commiser- 
ation. But, Gentlemen, there is one, over whom 
pity may mourn, — for he is wretched ; and mourn 
without a blush, — for he is guiltless. How shall 
I depict to you the deserted husband ? To every 
other object in this catalogue of calamity there is 
some stain attached which checks compassion. 
But here — Oh ! if ever there was a man amiable, 
it was that man. Oh ! if ever there was a husband 
fond, it was that husband. His hope, his joy, his 
ambition, was domestic ; his toils were forgotten 
in the affections of his home ; and amid every ad- 
verse variety of fortune, hope pointed to his 
children, — and he was comforted. By this vile 



GUTHRIE V. STERNE. 107 

act that hope is blasted, that house is a desert, 
those children are parentless! In vain do they 
look to their surviving parent : his heart is 
broken, his mind is in ruins, his very form is 
fading from the earth. He had one consolation, 
an aged mother, on whose life the remnant of his 
fortunes hung, and on whose protection of his 
children his remaining prospects rested ; even that 
is over ; — she could not survive his shame, she 
never raised her head, she became hearsed in his 
misfortune ; — •*■ he has followed her funeral. If 
this be not the climax of human misery, tell me 
in what does human misery consist ? Wife, parent, 
fortune, prospects, happiness, — all gone at once, 
— and gone for ever ! For my part, when I con- 
template this, I do not wonder at the impression 
it has produced on him ; I do not w T onder at the 
faded form, the dejected air, the emaciated coun- 
tenance, and all the ruinous and mouldering 
trophies, by which misery has marked its triumph 
over youth, and health, and happiness ? I know, 
that in the hordes of what is called fashionable 
life, there is a sect of philosophers, wonderfully 
patient of their fellow-creatures' sufferings ; men 
too insensible to feel for any one, or too selfish to 
feel for others. I trust there is not one amongst 
you who can even hear of such calamities without 
affliction ; or, if there be, I pray that he may never 
know their import by experience ; that having, in 
the wilderness of this world, but one dear and 
darling object, without whose participation bliss 
would be joyless, and in whose sympathies sorrow 



108 SPEECH IN THE CASE' 05* 

has found a charm ; whose smile has cheered his 
toil, whose love has pillowed his misfortunes, whose 
angel-spirit, guiding him through danger, and dark- 
ness, and despair, amid the world's frown and the 
friend's perfidy, was more than friend, and world, 
and all to him ! God forbid, that by a villain's 
wile, or a villain's wickedness, he should be taught 
how to appreciate the woe of others in the dismal 
solitude of his own. Oh, no ! I feel that I address 
myself to human beings, who, knowing the value 
of what the world is worth, are capable of appre- 
ciating all that makes it dear to us. 

Observe, however, — lest this crime should want 
aggravation — observe, I beseech you, the period 
of its accomplishment. My client was not so 
young as that the elasticity of his spirit could re- 
bound and bear him above the pressure of the 
misfortune, nor was he withered by age into a 
comparative insensibility ; but just at that tem- 
perate interval of manhood, when passion had 
ceased to play, and reason begins to operate ; when 
love, gratified, left him nothing to desire ; and 
fidelity, long tried, left him nothing to apprehend : 
he was just, too, at that period of his professional 
career, when, his patient industry having con- 
quered the ascent, he was able to look around him 
from the height on which he rested. For this, 
welcome had been the day of tumult, and the pale 
midnight lamp succeeding ; welcome had been the 
drudgery of form ; welcome the analysis of crime ; 
welcome the sneer of envy, and the scorn of dul- 
ness, and all the spurns which " patient merit of 



6USJBRIE V. STERNE. 109 

the unworthy takes." For this he had encountered, 
perhaps, the generous rivalry of genius, perhaps 
the biting blasts of poverty, perhaps the efforts of 
that deadly slander, which, coiling round the 
cradle of his young ambition, might have sought 
to crush him in its envenomed foldings. 

" Ah ! who can tell how hard it is to climb 

The steep where Fame's proud temple shines afar ? 
Ah ! who can tell how many a soul sublime 
Hath felt the influence of malignant star, 
And waged with fortune an eternal war ?" 

Can such an injury as this admit of justification ? 
I think the learned counsel will concede it cannot. 
But it may be palliated. Let us see how. Per- 
haps the defendant was young and thoughtless; 
perhaps unmerited prosperity raised him above the 
pressure of misfortune ; and the wild pulses of 
impetuous passion impelled him to a purpose at 
which his experience w r ould have shuddered. Quite 
the contrary. The noon of manhood has almost 
passed over him ; and a youth, spent in the rer 
cesses of a debtor's prison, made him familiar with 
every form of human misery : he saw what mis- 
fortune was ; — it did not teach him pity : he saw 
the effects of guilt ; — he spurned the admonition. 
Perhaps in the solitude of a single life, he had 
never known the social blessedness of marriage ; 
— he has a wife and children ; or, if she be not 
his wife, she is the victim of his crime, and adds 
another to the calendar of his seduction. Certain 
it is, he has little children, who think themselves 
legitimate ; will his advocates defend him, by 



110 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

proclaiming their bastardy ? Certain it is, there 
is a wretched female, his own cousin too, who 
thinks herself his wife ; will they protect him, by 
proclaiming he has only deceived her into being 
his prostitute ? Perhaps his crime, as in the cele- 
brated case of Howard, immortalized by Lord 
Erskine, may have found its origin in parental 
cruelty ; it might perhaps have been, that in their 
spring of life, when Fancy waved her fairy wand 
around them, till all above was sun-shine, and all 
beneath was flowers ; when to their clear and 
charmed vision this ample world was but a weed- 
less garden, where every tint spoke Nature's love- 
liness, and every sound breathed Heaven's melody, 
and every breeze was but embodied fragrance ; it 
might have been that, in this cloudless holiday, 
Love wove his roseate bondage round them, till 
their young hearts so grew together, a separate 
existence ceased, and life itself became a sweet 
identity ; it might have been that, envious of this 
paradise, some worse than demon tore them from 
each other, to pine for years in absence, and ai 
length to perish in a palliated impiety. Oh ! 
Gentlemen, in such a case, Justice herself, with 
her uplifted sword, would call on Mercy to pre- 
serve the victim. There was no such palliation : 
> — the period of their acquaintance was little more 
than sufficient for the maturity of their crime ; and 
they dare not libel Love, by shielding under its 
soft and sacred name the loathsome revels of an 
adulterous depravity. It might have been, the 
husband's cruelty left a too easy inroad for se- 
7 



GUTHRIE V. STERNE. Ill 

duction. Will they dare assert it ? Ah ! too well 
they knew he would not let " the winds of heaven 
visit her face too roughly." Monstrous as it is, 
I have heard, indeed, that they mean to rest upon 
an opposite palliation ; I have heard it rumoured, 
that they mean to rest the wife's infidelity upon 
the husband's fondness. I know that guilt, in its 
conception mean, and in its commission tremulous, 
is, in its exposure, desperate and audacious. I 
know that, in the fugitive panic of its retreat, it 
will stop to fling its Parthian poison upon the 
justice that pursues it. But I do hope, bad and 
abandoned, and hopeless as their cause is, — I do 
hope, for the name of human nature, that I have 
been deceived in the rumours of this unnatural 
defence. Merciful God ! is it in the presence of 
this venerable Court, is it in the hearing of this 
virtuous jury, is it in the zenith of an enlightened 
age, that I am to be told, because female tender- 
ness was not watched with worse than Spanish 
vigilance, and harassed with worse than eastern 
severity ; because the marriage-contract is not 
converted into the curse of incarceration ; be- 
cause woman is allowed the dignity of a human 
soul, and man does not degrade himself into a 
human monster ; because the vow of endearment 
is not made the vehicle of deception, and the 
altar's pledge is not become the passport of a 
barbarous perjury ; and that too in a land of 
courage and chivalry, where the female form has 
been held as a patent direct from the Divinity, 
bearing in its chaste and charmed helplessness 



112 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

the assurance of its strength, and the amulet of its 
protection: am I to be told, that the demon 
adulterer is therefore not only to perpetrate his 
crimes, but to vindicate himself, through the very 
virtues he has violated ? I cannot believe it ; I 
dismiss the supposition : it is most " monstrous, 
foul, and unnatural." Suppose that the plaintiff 
pursued a different principle ; suppose that his con- 
duct had been the reverse of what it was ; suppose, 
that in place of being kind, he had been cruel to 
this deluded female ; that he had been her tyrant, 
not her protector ; her gaoler, not her husband : 
what then might have been the defence of the adul- 
terer? Might he not then say, and say with specious- 
ness, " True, I seduced her into crime, but it was 
to save her from cruelty ; true, she is my adulteress, 
because he was her despot." Happily, Gentlemen, 
he can say no such thing. I have heard it said, 
too, during the ten months of calumny, for which, 
by every species of legal delay, they have pro- 
crastinated this trial, that, next to the impeach- 
ment of the husband's tenderness, they mean to 
rely on what they libel as the levity of their un- 
happy victim ! I know not by what right any 
man, but above all, a married man, presumes to 
scrutinize into the conduct of a married female. 
I know not, Gentlemen, how you would feel, 
under the consciousness that every coxcomb was 
at liberty to estimate the warmth, or the coolness, 
of your wives, by the barometer of his vanity, that 
he might ascertain precisely the prudence of his 
invasion on their virtue. But I do know, that 



GUTHRIE V. STERNE. 113 

such a defence, coining from such a quarter, would 
not at all surprise me. Poor — unfortunate — 
fallen female ! How can she expect mercy from 
her destroyer ? How can she expect that he will 
revere the characters he was careless of preserving ? 
How can she suppose that, after having made her 
peace the pander to his appetite, he will not make 
her reputation the victim of his avarice ? Such a 
defence is quite to be expected : knowing him, it 
will not surprise me ; if I know you, it will not 
avail him. 

Having now r shown you, that a crime, almost 
unprecedented in this country, is clothed in every 
aggravation, and robbed of every palliative, it is 
natural you should enquire, what was the motive 
for its commission? What do you think it was? 
Providentially — miraculously, I should have said, 
for you never could have divined — the Defendant 
has himself disclosed it. What do you think it 
was, Gentlemen ? Ambition I But a few days before 
his criminality, in answer to a friend, who rebuked 
him for the almost princely expenditure of his 
habits, " Oh," says he, " never mind ; Sterne 
must do something, by which Sterne may be 
known /" 1 had heard, indeed, that ambition was 
a vice, — but then a vice, so equivocal, it verged 
on virtue ; that it was the aspiration of a spirit, 
sometimes perhaps appalling, always magnificent ; 
that though its grasp might be fate, and its flight 
might be famine, still it reposed on earth's pinnacle, 
and played in heaven's lightnings ; that though it 
might fall in ruins, it arose in lire, and was with n I 
i 



114 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

so splendid, that even the horrors of that fall be- 
came immerged and mitigated in the beauties of 
that aberration ! But here is an ambition ! • — base, 
and barbarous, and illegitimate ; with all the gross- 
ness of the vice, with none of the grandeur of the 
virtue ; a mean, muffled, dastard incendiary, who, 
in the silence of sleep, and in the shades of mid- 
night, steals his Ephesian torch into the fane, which 
it was virtue to adore, and worse than sacrilege to 
have violated ! 

Gentlemen, my part is done ; yours is about to 
commence. You have heard this crime — its 
origin, its progress, its aggravations, its novelty 
among us. Go and tell your children and your 
country, whether or not it is to be made a pre- 
cedent. Oh, how awful is your responsibility! 
I do not doubt that you will discharge yourselves 
of it as becomes your characters. I am sure, in- 
deed, that you will mourn with me over the almost 
solitary defect in our otherwise matchless system 
of jurisprudence, which leaves the perpetrators of 
such an injury as this, subject to no amercement 
but that of money. I think you will lament the 
failure of the great Cicero of our age, to bring such 
an offence within the cognisance of a criminal 
jurisdiction : it was a subject suited to his legis- 
lative mind, worthy of his feeling heart, worthy of 
his immortal eloquence. I cannot, my Lord, even 
remotely allude to Lord Erskirie, without gratifying 
myself by saying of him, that by the rare union of 
all that was learned in law with all that was lucid 
in eloquence ; by the singular combination of all 



GUTHRIE V. STKKNk. 115 

that was pure in morals with all that was profound in 
wisdom ; he has stamped upon every action of his 
life the blended authority of a great mind, and an 
unquestionable conviction. I think, Gentlemen, 
you will regret the .failure of such a man in such 
an object. The merciless murderer may have 
manliness to plead ; the highway robber may have 
want to palliate ; yet they both are objects of 
criminal infliction : but the murderer of connubial 
bliss, who commits his crime in secrecy ; — the 
robber of domestic joys, whose very wealth, as in 
this case, may be his instrument ; — he is suffered 
to calculate on the infernal fame which a super- 
fluous and unfelt expenditure may purchase. The 
law, however, is so : and we must only adopt the 
remedy it affords us. In your adjudication of that 
remedy, I do not ask too much, when I ask the 
full extent of your capability : how poor, even so, 
is the wretched remuneration for an injury which 
nothing can repair, — for a loss which nothing can 
alleviate? Do you think that a mine could re- 
compense my client for the forfeiture of her who 
was dearer than life to him ? 

" Oh, had she been but true, 
Though Heaven had made him such another world, 
Of one entire and perfect chrysolite, 
He'd not exchange her for it!" 

I put it to any of you, what would you take to 
stand in his situation ? What would you take to 
have your prospects blasted, your profession de- 
spoiled, your peace ruined, your bed profaned, 

j 2 



116 SPEECH. 

your parents heart-broken, your children parent- 
less ? Believe me, Gentlemen, if it were not for 
those children, he would not come here to-day to 
seek such remuneration ; if it were not that, by 
your verdict, you may prevent those little innocent 
defrauded wretches from wandering beggars, as 
well as orphans, on the face of this earth. Oh, I 
know I need not ask this verdict from your mercy ; 
I need not extort it from your compassion ; I will 
receive it from your justice. I do conjure you, 
not as fathers, but as husbands ; — not as husbands, 
but as citizens ; — not as citizens, but as men ; — 
not as men, but as Christians ; — by all your obli- 
gations, public, private, moral, and religious ; by 
the hearth profaned ; by the home desolated ; by 
the canons of the living God foully spurned ; — 
save, oh ! save your fire-sides from the contagion, 
your country from the crime, and perhaps thou- 
sands, yet unborn, from the shame, and sin, and 
sorrow of this example ! 



SPEECH 

OF 

MR. PHILLIPS 

IN 

THE CASE OF O'MULLAN v. M'KORKILL, 

DELIVERED 

IN THE COUNTY COURT-HOUSE, 

GALVTAY. 



My Lords and Gentlemen, 
I" AM instructed as of counsel for the Plaintiff, 
to state to you the circumstances in which this 
action has originated. It is a source to me, I will 
confess it, of much personal embarrassment. Fee- 
bly indeed, can I attempt to convey to you, the 
feelings with which a perusal of this brief has 
affected me ; painful to you must be my inefficient 
transcript — painful to all who have the common 
feelings of country or of kind, must be this cala- 
mitous compendium of all that degrades our indi- 
vidual nature, and of all that has, for many an age 
of sorrow, perpetuated a curse upon our national 
character. It is, perhaps, the misery of this pro- 
i 3 



118 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

fession, that every hour our vision may be blasted 
by some withering crime, and our hearts wrung 
with some agonising recital ; there is no frightful 
form of vice, or no disgusting phantom of infirmity, 
which guilt does not array in spectral train before 
us. Horrible is the assemblage ! humiliating the 
application ! but thank God, even amid those very 
scenes of disgrace and of debasement, occasions oft 
arise for the redemption of our dignity ; occasions, 
on which the virtues breathed into us, by heavenly 
inspiration, walk abroad in the divinity of their 
exertion ; before whose beam the wintry robe falls 
from the form of virtue, and all the midnight 
images of horror vanish into nothing. Joyfully 
and piously do I recognise such an occasion ; 
gladly do I invoke you to the generous partici- 
pation ; yes, Gentlemen, though you must prepare 
to hear much that degrades our nature, much that 
distracts our country — though all that oppression 
could devise against the poor — though all that 
persecution could inflict upon the feeble — though 
all that vice could wield against the pious — 
though all that the venom of a venal turpitude 
could pour upon the patriot, must with their alter- 
nate apparition afflict, affright, and humiliate you, 
still do I hope, that over this charnel-house of 
crime — over this very sepulchre, where corruption 
sits enthroned upon the merit it has murdered, that 
voice is at length about to be heard, at which the 
martyred victim will arise to vindicate the ways of 
Providence, and prove that even in its worst ad- 
versity there is a might and immortality in virtue. 



o'iMULLAN V. M'KORKILL. 119 

The Plaintiff, Gentlemen, you have heard, is 
the Rev. Cornelius O'Mullan ; he is a clergyman 
of the church of Rome, and became invested with 
that venerable appellation, so far back as September 
1 804. It is a title which you know, in this country, 
no rank ennobles, no treasure enriches, no establish- 
ment supports ; its possessor stands undisguised by 
any rag of this world's decoration, resting all tem- 
poral, all eternal hope upon his toil, his talents, his 
attainments, and his piety — doubtless, after all, the 
highest honours, as well as the most imperishable 
treasures of the man of God. Year after year 
passed over my client, and each anniversary only 
gave him an additional title to these qualifications. 
His precept was but the handmaid to his prac- 
tice ; the sceptic heard him, and was convinced ; 
the ignorant attended him, and were taught ; he 
smoothed the death-bed of too heedless wealth ; 
he rocked the cradle of the infant charity : oh, no 
wonder he walked in the sunshine of the public 
eye, no wonder he toiled through the pressure of 
the public benediction. This is not an idle decla- 
mation; such was the result his ministry produced, 
that within five years from the date of its com- 
mencement, nearly 2000/. of voluntary subscription 
enlarged the temple where such precepts were 
taught, and such piety exemplified. Such was 
the situation of Mr. O'Mullan, when a dissolution 
of parliament took place, and an unexpected con- 
test for the representation of Deny, threw that 
county into unusual commotion. One of the can- 
didates was of the Ponsonby family — a family 
j 4 



b20 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

devoted to the interests, and dear to the heart of 
Ireland; he naturally thought that his parlia- 
mentary conduct entitled him to the vote of every 
Catholic in the land; and so it did, not only of 
every Catholic, but of every Christian who pre- 
ferred the diffusion of the Gospel to the ascend- 
ancy of a sect, and loved the principles of the con- 
stitution better than the pretensions of a party. 
Perhaps you will think with me, that there is a 
sort of posthumous interest thrown about that 
event, when I tell you, that the candidate on that 
occasion was the lamented Hero over whose tomb 
the tears, not only of Ireland, but of Europe, have 
been so lately shed ; he who, mid the blossom of 
the world's chivalry, died conquering a deathless 
name upon the iield of Waterloo. He applied to 
Mr. O'Mullan for his interest, and that interest 
was cheerfully given, the concurrence of his bishop 
having been previously obtained. Mr. Ponsonby 
succeeded; and a dinner, to which all parties were 
invited, and from which all party spirit was ex- 
pected to absent itself, was given to commemorate 
one common triumph — the purity and the pri- 
vileges of election. In other countries, such an 
expectation might be natural ; the exercise of a 
noble constitutional privilege, the triumph of a 
great popular cause, might not unaptly expand 
itself in the intercourse of the board, and unite all 
hearts in the natural bond of festive commemo- 
ration. But, alas, G entlemen, in this unhappy land, 
such has been the result, whether of our faults, 
our follies, or our misfortunes, that a detestable 



iULLAN V. M'KORKILL. 151 

nion converts the very balm of the bowl into 
poison, commissioning its vile and harpy offspring, 
to turn even our festivity into famine. My client 
was at this dinner ; it was not to be endured that a 
Catholic should pollute with his presence the civic 
festivities of the loyal Londonderry ! such an in- 
trusion, even the acknowledged sanctity of his 
character could not excuse ; it became necessary 
to insult him. There is a toast, which, perhaps, 
few in this united county are in the habit 
of hearing, but it is the invariable watchword of 
the Orange orgies ; it is briefly entitled " The 
glorious, pious, and immortal memory of the great 
and good King William." I have no doubt the 
simplicity of your understandings is puzzled how 
to discover any offence in the commemoration of 
the Revolution Hero. The loyalists of Derry are 
more wise in their generation. There, when some 
Bacchanalian bigots wish to avert the intrusive 
visitations of their own memory, they commence 
by violating the memory of King William. * Those 
who happen to have shoes or silver in their frater- 
nity — no very usual occurrence —'thank His Ma- 



* This loyal toast, handed down by Orange tradition, is lite- 
rally as follows — we give it for the edification of the sister 
island. 

" The glorious, pious, and immortal memory of the great and 
good King William, who saved us from Pope and Popery, 
James and slavery, brass money and wooden shoes; here is bad 
luck to the Pope, and a hempen rope to all Papists " 

It is drank kneeling, if they cannot stand, nine times nine, 
amid various mysteries which none but the elect can comprehend, 



122 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

jesty that the shoes are not wooden, and that the 
silver is not brass, a commodity, by the bye, of 
which any legacy would have been quite super- 
fluous. The Pope comes in for a pious benedic- 
tion : and the toast concludes with a patriotic 
wish, for all of his persuasion, by the consum- 
mation of which, there can be no doubt, the 
hempen manufactures of this country would ex- 
perience a very considerable consumption. Such, 
Gentlemen, is the enlightened, and liberal, and 
social sentiment of which the first sentence, all 
that is usually given, forms the suggestion. I 
must not omit that it is generally taken standing, 
always providing it be in the power of the com- 
pany. This toast was pointedly given to insult 
Mr. O'Mullan. Naturally averse to any alter- 
cation, his most obvious course was to quit the 
company, and this he did immediately. He was, 
however, as immediately recalled by an intimation, 
that the Catholic question, and might its claims 
be considered justly and liberally, had been toasted 
as a peace-offering by Sir George Hill, the City 
Recorder. My client had no gall in his disposi- 
tion ; he at once clasped to his heart the friendly 
overture, and in such phrase as his simplicity sup- 
plied, poured forth the gratitude of that heart to 
the liberal Recorder. Poor O'Mullan had the 
wisdom to imagine that the politician's compli- 
ment was the man's conviction, and that a table 
toast was the certain prelude to a parliamentary 
suffrage. Despising all experience, he applied 
the adage, Caelum -non animum mutant qui trans 



o'mullau v. m'korkii.l. 123 

mare currunt, to the Irish patriot. I need not 
paint to you the consternation of Sir George, at 
so unusual and so unparliamentary a construction. 
He indignantly disclaimed the intention imputed 
to him, denied and deprecated the unfashionable 
inference, and acting on the broad scale of an 
impartial policy, gave to one party the weight of 
his vote, and to the other, the (no doubt in his 
opinion) equally valuable acquisition of his elo- 
quence ; — by the way, no unusual compromise 
amongst modern politicians. 

The proceedings of this dinner soon became 
public. Sir George, you may be sure, was little 
in love with his notoriety. However, Gentlemen, 
the sufferings of the powerful are seldom without 
sympathy ; if they receive not the solace of the 
disinterested and the sincere, they are at least 
sure to find a substitute in the miserable profes- 
sions of an interested hypocrisy. Who could 
imagine, that Sir George, of all men, was to drink 
from the spring of Catholic consolation ? yet so it 
happened. Two men of that communion had the 
hardihood, and the servility, to frame an address 
to him, reflecting upon the pastor, who was its 
pride, and its ornament. This address, with the 
most obnoxious commentaries, was instantly pub- 
lished by the Derry Journalist, who, from that 
hour, down to the period of his ruin, has never 
ceased to persecute my client, with all that the 
most deliberate falsehood could invent, and all 
that the most infuriate bigotry could perpetrate. 
This Journal, I may as well now describe to you; 



124 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

it is one of the numerous publications which the 
misfortunes of this unhappy land have generated, 
and which has grown into considerable affluence 
by the sad contributions of the public calamity. 
There is not a provincial village in Ireland, which 
some such official fiend does not infest, fabricating 
a gazette of fraud and falsehood, upon all who pre- 
sume to advocate her interests, or uphold the 
ancient religion of her people; — the worst foes of 
government, under pretence of giving it assistance ; 
the deadliest enemies to the Irish name, under the 
mockery of supporting its character ; the moat 
licentious, irreligious, illiterate banditti, that ever 
polluted the fair fields of literature, under the 
spoliated banner of the press. Bloated with the 
public spoil, and blooded in the chase of character, 
no abilities can arrest, no piety can awe ; no mis- 
fortune affect, no benevolence conciliate them ; 
the reputation of the living, and the memory of 
the dead, are equally plundered in their desolating 
progress ; even the awful sepulchre affords not an 
asylum to their selected victim. Human Hyenas! 
they will rush into the sacred receptacle of death, 
gorging their ravenous and brutal rapine, amid the 
memorials of our last infirmity ! Such is a too true 
picture of what I hope unauthorisedly misnames 
itself the ministerial press of Ireland. Amid that 
polluted press, it is for you to say, whether The 
Londonderry Journal stands on an infamous ele- 
vation. When this address was published in the 
name of the Catholics, that calumniated body, as 



O'MOLLAN v. m'korkill. IQJ 

was naturally to be expected, became universally 
indignant. 

You may remember, Gentlemen, amongst the 
many expedients resorted to by Ireland, for the 
recovery of her rights, after she had knelt session 
after session at the bar of the legislature, covered 
with the wounds of glory, and praying redemption 
from the chains that rexvarded them ; — you may 
remember, I say, amongst many vain expedients 
of supplication and remonstrance, her Catholic 
population delegated a board to consult on their 
affairs, and forward their petition. Of that body, 
fashionable as the topic has now become, far be it 
from me to speak with disrespect. It contained 
much talent, much integrity ; and it exhibited 
what must ever be to me an interesting spectacle, 
a^'great body of my fellow-men, and fellow-chris- 
tians, claiming admission into that constitution 
which their ancestors had achieved by their valour, 
and to which they were entitled as their inherit- 
ance. This is no time, this is no place for the 
discussion of that question ; but since it does force 
itself incidentally upon me, I will say, that, as on 
the one hand, I cannot fancy a despotism more 
impious, or more inhuman, than the political de- 
basement here, on account of that faith by which 
men hope to win an happy eternity hereafter ; so 
on the other, I cannot fancy a vision in its 

ASPECT MORE DIVINE THAN THE ETERNAL CROSS 



AND THE CHRISTIAN HAND, HIGH IN THE VAN OF 



126 SPEECH IN THE CASE OP 

universal liberty. Of this board the two volun- 
teer framers of the address happened to be mem- 
bers. The body who deputed them, instantly 
assembled and declared their delegation void. You 
would suppose, Gentlemen, that after this decisive 
public brand of reprobation, those officious med- 
dlers would have avoided its recurrence, by retir- 
ing from scenes for which nature and education 
had totally unfitted them. Far, however, from 
acting under any sense of shame, those excluded 
outcasts even summoned a meeting to appeal from 
the sentence the public opinion had pronounced 
on them. The meeting assembled, and after 
almost the day's deliberation on their conduct, 
the former sentence was unanimously confirmed. 
The men did not deem it prudent to attend them- 
selves, but at a late hour when the business 
was concluded, when the resolutions had passed, 
when the chair was vacated, when the multitude 
was dispersing, they attempted with some Orange 
followers to obtrude into the chapel, which in 
large cities, such as Deny, is the usual place of 
meeting. An angry spirit arose among the peo- 
ple. Mr. O'Mullan, as was his duty, locked the 
doors to preserve the house of God from profan- 
ation, and addressed the crowd in such terms, as 
induced them to repair peaceably to their respec- 
tive habitations. I need not paint to you the bitter 
emotions with which these deservedly disappointed 
men were agitated. All hell was at work within 
them, and a conspiracy was hatched against the 
peace of my client, the vilest, the foulest, the most 



o'MULLAN V. M'kORKILL. 127 

infernal that ever vice devised, or demons executed. 
Restrained from exciting a riot by his interference, 
they actually swore a riot against him, prosecuted 
him to conviction, worked on the decaying in- 
tellect of his bishop to desert him, and amid the 
savage war-whoop of this slanderous Journal, all 
along inflaming the public mind by libels the most 
atrocious, finally flung this poor, religious, unof- 
fending priest, into a damp and desolate dungeon, 
where the very iron that bound, had more of hu- 
manity than the despots that surrounded him. I 
am told, they triumph much in this conviction. 
I seek not to impugn the verdict of that jury ; 
I have no doubt they acted conscientiously. It 
weighs not with me that every member of my 
client's creed was carefully excluded from that 
jury — no doubt they acted conscientiously. It weighs 
not with me that every man impannelled on the 
trial of the priest, was exclusively Protestant, and 
that, too, in a city so prejudiced, that not long 
ago,- by their Corporation-law, no Catholic dare 
breathe the air of Heaven within its walls — no 
doubt they acted conscientiously. It weighs not 
with me, that not three days previously, one of 
that jury was heard publicly to declare, he wished 
he could persecute the Papist to his death — no 
doubt they acted conscientiously. It weighs not 
with me, that the public mind had been so in- 
flamed by the exasperation of this libeller, that an 
impartial trial was utterly impossible. Let them 
enjoy their triumph. But for myself, knowing 
him as do, here in the teeth of that conviction, 



1£8 SPEECH IN THE CASE OV 

I declare it, I would rather be that man, so as- 
persed, so imprisoned, so persecuted, and have his 
consciousness, than stand the highest of the court- 
liest rabble that ever crouched before the foot of 
power, or fed upon the people — plundered alms of 
despotism. Oh, of short duration is such daemo- 
niac triumph. Oh, blind and groundless is the 
hope of vice, imagining its victory can be more 
than for the moment. This very day I hope will 
prove, that if virtue suffers, it is but for a season ; 
and that sooner or later their patience tried, and 
their purity testified, prosperity will crown the 
interests of probity and worth. 

Perhaps you imagine, Gentlemen, that his per- 
son imprisoned, his profession gone, his prospects 
ruined, and what he held dearer than all, his cha- 
racter defamed ; the malice of his enemies might 
have rested from persecution. " Thus bad begins, 
but worse remains behind." Attend, I beseech 
you, to what now follows, because I have come in 
order, to the particular libel, which we have se- 
lected from the innumerable calumnies of this 
Journal, and to which we call your peculiar con- 
sideration. Business of moment, to the nature of 
which, I shall feel it my duty presently to ad- 
vert, called Mr. O'Mullan to the metropolis. 
Through the libels of the Defendant, he was at 
this time in disfavour with his bishop, and a 
rumour had gone abroad, that he was never again 
to revisit his ancient congregation. The bishop 
in the interim returned to Deny, and on the 
Sunday following, went to officiate at the parish 



o'mullan v. m'korkill. 129 

chapel. All ranks crowded tremulously round 
him ; the widow sought her guardian ; the orphan 
his protector ; the poor their patron ; the rich 
their guide; the ignorant their pastor; all, all, 
with one voice, demanded his recall, by whose 
absence the graces, the charities, the virtues of 
life, were left orphans in their communion. Can 
you imagine a more interesting spectacle ? The 
human mind never conceived — the human hand 
never depicted a more instructive or delightful 
picture. Yet, will you believe it ! out of this very 
circumstance, the Defendant fabricated the most 
audacious, and if possible, the most cruel of his 
Libels. Hear his words : — " O'Mullan," says he, 
" was convicted and degraded, for assaulting his 
own Bishop, and the Recorder of Deny, in the 
parish chapel !" Observe the disgusting malignity 
of the Libel — observe the crowded damnation 
which it accumulates on my client — observe all 
the aggravated crime which it embraces. First, he 
assaults his venerable Bishop — the great Eccle- 
siastical Patron, to whom he was sworn to be 
obedient, and against whom he never conceived 
or articulated irreverence. Next, he assaults the 
Recorder of Derry — a Privy Councillor, the 
supreme municipal authority of the City. And 
where does he do so ? Gracious God, in the very 
temple of thy worship ! That is, says the inhuman 
Libeller — he a citizen — he a Clergyman insulted 
not only the civil but the ecclesiastical authorities, 
in the face of man, and in the house of prayer ; 
trampling contumeliously upon all human law, 



130 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

amid the sacred altars, where he believed the 
Almighty witnessed the profanation! I am so 
horror-struck at this blasphemous and abominable 
turpitude, I can scarcely proceed. What will you 
say, Gentlemen, when I inform you, that at the 
very time this atrocity was imputed to him, he 
was in the city of Dublin, at a distance of 120 
miles from the venue of its commission ! But oh ! 
when calumny once begins its work, how vain are 
the impediments of time and distance ! Before the 
sirocco of its breath all nature withers, and age, 
and sex, and innocence, and station, perish in the 
unseen, but certain desolation of its progress! 
Do you wonder O'Mullan sunk before these ac- 
cumulated calumnies ; do you wonder the feeble 
were intimidated, the wavering decided, the 
prejudiced confirmed? He was forsaken by his 
Bishop ; he was denounced by his enemies — his 
very friends fled in consternation from the " stricken 
deer;" he was banished from the scenes of his 
childhood, from the endearments of his youth, 
from the field of his fair and honourable ambition. 
In vain did he resort to strangers for subsistence ; 
on the very wings of the wind, the calumny pre- 
ceded him; and from that hour to this, a too true 
apostle, he has been " a man of sorrows," " not 
knowing where to lay his head." I will not ap- 
peal to your passions ; alas ! how inadequate am 
I to depict his sufferings ; you must take them 
from the evidence. I have told you, that at the 
time of those infernally fabricated libels, the Plain- 
tiff was in Dublin, and I promised to advert to 
the cause by which his absence was occasioned. 



o'mullan v. m'korkill. 131 

Observing in the course of bis parochial duties, 
the deplorable, I had almost said the organized ig- 
norance of the Irish peasantry — an ignorance whence 
all their crimes, and most of their sufferings ori- 
ginate ; observing also, that there was no publicly 
established literary institution to relieve them, save 
only to the charter-schools, which tendered learn- 
ing to the shivering child, as a bounty upon apos- 
tacy to the faith of his fathers ; he determined if 
possible to give them the lore of this world, with- 
out offering it as a mortgage upon the inheritance 
of the next. cHe framed the prospectus of a 
school, for the education of five hundred children, 
and went to the metropolis to obtain subscriptions 
for the purpose. I need not descant upon the 
great general advantage, or to this country the 
peculiarly patriotic consequences, which the suc- 
cess of such a plan must have produced. No 
doubt, you have all personally considered — no 
doubt, you have all personally experienced, that 
of all the blessings which it has pleased Providence 
to allow us to cultivate, there is not one which 
breathes a purer fragrance, or bears an heavenlier 
aspect than education. It is a companion which 
no misfortunes can depress, no clime destroy, no 
enemy alienate, no despotism enslave; at home a 
friend, abroad an introduction, in solitude a solace, 
in society an ornament, it chastens vice, it guides 
virtue, it gives at once a grace and government to 
genius. Without it, what is man? A splendid slave! 
a reasoning savage, vacillating between the dignity 
of an intelligence derived from God, and the.de- 
k % 



132 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

gradation of passions participated with brutes'; and 
in the accident of their alternate ascendancy, 
shuddering at the terrors of an hereafter, or em- 
bracing the horrid hope of annihilation. What 
is this wondrous world of his residence ? 

A mighty maze, and all without a plan ; 

a dark and desolate and dreary cavern, without 
wealth, or ornament or order. But light up with- 
in it the torch of knowledge, and how wondrous 
the transition ! The seasons change, the atmo- 
sphere breathes, the landscape lives, earth unfolds 
its fruits, ocean rolls in its magnificence, the 
heavens display their constellated canopy, and the 
grand animated spectacle of nature rises revealed 
before him, its varieties regulated, and its mys- 
teries resolved ! The phenomena which bewilder, 
the prejudices which debase, the superstitions which 
enslave, vanish before education^} Like the holy 
symbol which blazed upon the cloud before the 
hesitating Constantine, if man follow but its pre- 
cepts purely, it will not only lead him to the vic- 
tories of this world, but open the very portals of 
omnipotence for his admission. Cast your eye 
over the monumental map of ancient grandeur, 
once studded with the stars of empire, and the 
splendours of philosophy. What erected the little 
state of Athens into a powerful commonwealth, 
placing in her hand the sceptre of legislation, and 
wreathing round her brow the imperishable chap- 
let of literary fame ; what extended Rome, the 
haunt of a banditti, into universal empire ; what 



O'.MULLAN V. M'KORKILL. 183 

animated Sparta with that high unbending, ada- 
mantine courage, which conquered nature herself, 
and has fixed her in the sight of future ages, a 
model of public virtue, and a proverb of national 
independence? What, but those wise public in- 
stitutions which strengthened their minds with 
early application, informed their infancy with the 
principles of action, and sent them into the world, 
too vigilant to be deceived by its calms, and too 
vigorous to be shaken by its whirlwinds ? But 
surely, if there be a people in the world, to whom 
the blessings of education are peculiarly appli- 
cable, it is the Irish people. Lively, ardent, intel- 
ligent, and sensitive; nearly all their acts spring 
from impulse, and no matter how that impulse be 
given, it is immediately adopted, and the adoption 
and the execution are identified. It is this prin- 
ciple, if principle it can be called, which renders 
Ireland alternately the poorest and the proudest 
country in the world; now chaining her in the 
very abyss of crime, now lifting her to the very 
pinnacle of glory ; which in the poor, proscribed, 
peasant Catholic, crowds the gaol and feeds the 
gibbet ; which in the more fortunate, because 
more educated Protestant, leads victory a captive 
at her car, and holds echo mute at her eloquence } 
making a national monopoly of fame, and, as it 
were, attempting to naturalise the achievements 
of the universe. In order that this libel may want 
no possible aggravation, the defendant published 
it when my client was absent on this work of pa- 
triotism; he published it when he was absent; he 
x 3 



134 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

published it when he was absent on a work of 
virtue; and he published it on all the authority 
of his local knowledge, when that very local 
knowledge must have told him, that it was de- 
stitute of the shadow of a foundation. Can you 
imagine a more odious complication of all that 
is deliberate in malignity, and all that is depraved 
in crime? I promised, Gentlemen, that I would 
not harrow your hearts, by exposing all that 
agonises mine, in the contemplation of individual 
suffering. There is, however, one subject con- 
nected with this trial, public in its nature, and 
universal in its interest, which imperiously calls 
for an exemplary verdict ; I mean the liberty of 
the press — a theme which I approach with mingled 
sensations of awe, and agony, and admiration. 
Considering all that we too fatally have seen — all 
that, perhaps, too fearfully we may have cause to 
apprehend, I feel myself cling to that residuary 
safeguard, with an affection no temptations can 
seduce, with a suspicion no anodyne can lull, with 
a fortitude that peril but infuriates. In the dire- 
ful retrospect of experimental despotism, and the 
hideous prospect of its possible re-animation, I 
clasp it with the desperation of a widowed female, 
who, in the desolation of her house, and the de- 
struction of her household, hurries the last of her 
offspring through the flames, at once the relic of 
her joy, the depository of her wealth, and the re- 
membrancer' of her happiness. It is the duty of 
us all to guard strictly this inestimable privilege — 
a privilege which can never be destroyed, save by 



o'mullan v. m'korkill. 
the licentiousness of those who wilfully abuse it. 

No, IT IS NOT IX THE ARROGANCE OF POWER ; NO, 
IT IS NOT IN THE ARTIFICES OF LAW J NO, IT IS NOT 
IN THE FATUITY OF PRINCES ; NO, IT IS NOT IN THE 
VENALITY OF PARLIAMENTS, TO CRUSH THIS MIGHTY, 
THIS MAJESTIC PRIVILEGE *. REVILED, IT WILL RE- 
MONSTRATE ; MURDERED, IT WILL REVIVE ; BURIED, 
IT WILL RE-ASCEND J THE VERY ATTEMPT AT ITS 
OPPRESSION WILL PROVE THE TRUTH OF ITS IMMOR- 
TALITY, AND THE ATOM THAT PRESUMED TO SPURN, 
WILL FADE AWAY BEFORE THE TRUMPET OF ITS RE- 
TRIBUTION ! Man holds it on the same principle 
that he does his soul ; the powers of this world can- 
not prevail against it ; it can only perish through 
its own depravity. What then shall be his fate, 
through whose instrumentality it is sacrificed ? Nay- 
more, what shall be his fate, who, intrusted with the 
guardianship of its security, becomes the traitorous 
accessory to its ruin ? Nay more, what shall be his 
fate, by whom its powers delegated for the public 
good, are converted into the calamities of private 
virtue ; against whom, industry denounced, merit 
undermined, morals calumniated, piety aspersed, all 
through the very means confided for their protec- 
tion, cry aloud for vengeance ? AVhat shall be his 
fate ? Oh, I would hold such a monster, so pro- 
tected, so sanctified, and so sinning, as I would 
some daemon, who, going forth consecrated, in the 
name of the Deity, the book of life on his lips, and 
the dagger of death beneath his robe, awaits the sigh 
of piety, as the signal of plunder, and unveins the 
heart's blood of confiding adoration Q Should not 
k 4 



136 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

such a case as this require some palliation? Is 
there any? Perhaps the defendant might have 
been misled as to circumstances? No, he lived 
upon the spot, and had the best possible inform- 
ation. Do you think he believed in the truth of 
the publication ? No ; he knew that in every syl- 
lable it was as false as perjury. Do you think that 
an anxiety for the Catholic community might have 
inflamed him against the imaginary dereliction of its 
advocate ? No ; the very essence of his Journal is 
prejudice. Do you think that in the ardour of liberty 
he might have venially transgressed its boundaries ? 
No ; in every line he licks the sores, and pampers 
the pestilence of authority. I do not ask you to be 
stoics in your investigation. If you can discover 
in this libel one motive inferentially moral, one 
single virtue which he has plundered and misap- 
plied, give him its benefit. I will not demand 
such an effort of your faith, as to imagine, that 
his northern constitution could, by any miracle, 
be fired into the admirable but mistaken energy 
of enthusiasm ; — that he could for one moment 
have felt the inspired phrenzy of those loftier spirits, 
who, under some daring but divine delusion, rise 
into the arch of an ambition so bright, so baneful, 
yet so beauteous, as leaves the world in wonder 
whether it should admire or mourn — whether it 
should weep or worship ! No ; you will not only 
search in vain for such a palliative, but you will 
find this publication springing from the most odious 
origin, and disfigured by the most foul accompani- 
ments, founded in a bigotry at which hell rejoices, 



o'mullan v. m'korkill. 137 

crouching with a sycophancy at which flattery 
blushes, deformed by a falsehood at which perjury 
would hesitate, and, to crown the climax of its 
crowded infamies, committed under the sacred 
shelter of the Press ; as if this false, slanderous, 
sycophantic slave, could not assassinate private 
worth without polluting public privilege ; as if he 
could not sacrifice the character of the pious with- 
out profaning the protection of the free ; as if he 
could not poison learning, liberty, and religion, 
unless he filled his chalice from the very font 
whence they might have expected to derive the 
waters of their salvation ! 

Now, Gentlemen, as to the measure of your 
damages : — You are the best judges on that sub- 
ject ; though, indeed, I have been asked, and I 
heard the question with some surprise, — why it is 
that we have brought this case at all to be tried 
before you. To that I might give at once an un- 
objectionable answer, namely, that the law allowed 
us. But I will deal much more candidly with you. 
We brought it here, because it was as far as pos- 
sible from the scene of prejudice; because no pos- 
sible partiality could exist ; because, in this happy 
and united county, less of the bigotry which dis- 
tracts the rest of Ireland exists, than in any other 
with which we are acquainted ; because the nature 
of the action, which we have mercifully brought 
in place of a criminal prosecution, — the usual 
course pursued in the present day, at least against 
the independent press of Ireland, — gives them, 
if they have it, the power of proving a justifica- 



138 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

tion ; and I perceive they have emptied half the 
north here for the purpose. But I cannot anti- 
cipate an ^objection, which, no doubt, shall not be 
made. If this habitual libeller should character- 
istically instruct his counsel to hazard it, that 
learned gentleman is much too wise to adopt it, 
and must know you much too well to insult you 
by its utterance. What damages, then, Gentlemen, 
can you give ? I am content to leave the defend- 
ant's crimes altogether out of the question, but 
how can you recompense the sufferings of my 
client? Who shall estimate the cost of priceless 
reputation — that impress which gives this human 
dross its currency, without which we stand de- 
spised, debased, depreciated ? Who shall repair it 
inj ured ? Who can redeem it lost ? Oh ! well 
and truly does the great philosopher of poetry 
esteem the world's wealth as " trash" in the com- 
parison. Without it, gold has no value, birth no 
distinction, station no dignity, beauty no charm, 
age no reverence ; or, should I not rather say, 
without it every treasure impoverishes, every grace 
deforms, every dignity degrades, and all the arts, 
the decorations, and accomplishments of life, 
stand, like the beacon-blaze upon a rock, warning 
the world that its approach is danger — that its- 
contact is death. The wretch without it is under 
un eternal quarantine ; — no friend to greet — no 
nome to harbour him. The voyage of his life be- 
comes a joyless peril ; and in the midst of all 
ambition can achieve, or avarice amass, or rapacity 
plunder, he tosses on the surge — a buoyant pesti- 



o\mullan v. m'korkill. 139 

lemei But, Gentlemen, let me not degrade into 
the selfishness of individual safety, or individual 
exposure, this universal principle : it testifies an 
higher, a more ennobling origin. It is this which, 
consecrating the humble circle of the hearth, will 
at times extend itself to the circumference of the 
horizon ; which nerves the arm of the patriot to 
save his country ; which lights the lamp of the. 
philosopher to amend man ; which, if it does not 
inspire, will yet invigorate the martyr to merit 
immortality; which, when one world's agony is 
passed, and the glory of another is dawning, will 
prompt the prophet, even in his chariot of fire, 
and in his vision of heaven, to bequeath to man 
kind the mantle of his memory! Oh divine, oh 
delightful legacy of a spotless reputation ! Rich 
is the inheritance it leaves ; pious the example it 
testifies; pure, precious, and imperishable, the 
hope which it inspires ! Can you conceive a more 
atrocious injury than to filch from its possessor 
this inestimable benefit — to rob society of its 
charm, and solitude of its solace ; not only to 
outlaw life, but to attaint death, converting the 
very grave, the refuge of the sufferer, into the 
gate of infamy and of shame ! I can conceive 
few crimes beyond it. He who plunders my pro- 
perty takes from me that which can be repaired 
by time : but what period can repair a ruined re- 
putation ? He who maims my person affects that 
which medicine may remedy : but what herb has 
sovereignty over the wounds of slander? He 
who ridicules my poverty, or reproaches my pro- 



140 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

fession, upbraids me with that which industry may 
retrieve, and integrity may purify : but what riches 
shall redeem the bankrupt fame ? what power shall 
blanch the sullied snow of character ? Can there 
be an injury more deadly ? Can there be a crime 
more cruel ? It is without remedy — it is without 
antidote — it is without evasion ! The reptile ca- 
lumny is ever on the watch. From the fascination 
of its eye no activity can escape ; from the venom 
of its fang no sanity can recover. It has no en- 
joyment but crime ; it has no prey but virtue ; it 
has no interval from the restlessness of its malice, 
save when, bloated with its victims, it grovels to 
disgorge them at the withered shrine, where envy 
idolises Iter own infirmities. Under such a visit- 
ation how dreadful would be the destiny of the 
virtuous and the good, if the providence of our 
constitution had not given you the power, as, I 
trust, you will have the principle, to bruise the 
head of the serpent, and crush and crumble the 
altar of its idolatry_T) 

And now, Gentlemen, having toiled through 
this narrative of unprovoked and pitiless persecu- 
tion, I should with pleasure consign my client to 
your hands, if a more imperative duty did not still 
remain to me, and that is, to acquit him of every 
personal motive in the prosecution of this action. 
No ; in the midst of slander, and suffering, and 
severities unexampled, he has had no thought, 
but, that as his enemies evinced how malice could 
persecute, he should exemplify how religion could 
endure ; that if his piety failed to affect the op- 



o'mullan v. m'korkill. 141 

pressor, his patience might at least avail to fortify 
the afflicted. He was as the rock of Scripture 
before the face of infidelity. The rain of the de- 
luge had fallen — it only smoothed his asperities : 
the wind of the tempest beat — it only blanched 
his brow : the rod, not of prophecy, but of perse- 
cution smote him ; and the desert, glittering with 
the Gospel dew, became a miracle of the faith it 
would have tempted ! No, Gentlemen ; not self- 
ishly has he appealed to this tribunal : but the 
venerable religion wounded in his character, — 
but the august priesthood vilified in his person, — 
but the doubts of the sceptical, hardened by his 
acquiescence, — but the fidelity of the feeble, ha- 
zarded by his forbearance, goaded him from the 
profaned privacy of the cloister into this repulsive 
scene of public accusation. In him this reluctance 
springs from a most natural and characteristic de- 
licacy : in us it would become a most overstrained 
injustice. Xo, Gentlemen: though with him we 
must remember morals outraged, religion assailed, 
law violated, the priesthood scandalised, the press 
betrayed, and all the disgusting calendar of ab- 
stract evil ; yet with him we must not reject 
the injuries of the individual sufferer. We must 
picture to ourselves a young man, partly by 
the self-denial of parental love, partly by the 
energies of personal exertion, struggling into a 
profession, where, by the pious exercise of his 
talents, he may make the fame, the wealth, the 
flatteries of this world, so many angel heralds to 
the happiness of the next. His precept is a trea- 



142 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

sure to the poor ; his practice, a model to the rich. 
When he reproves, sorrow seeks his presence as a 
sanctuary ; and in his path of peace, should he 
pause by the death-bed of despairing sin, the soul 
becomes imparadised in the light of his benedic- 
tion ! Imagine, Gentlemen, you see him thus ; 
and then, if you can, imagine vice so desperate as 
to defraud the world of so fair a vision. Anti- 
cipate for a moment the melancholy evidence we 
must too soon adduce to you. Behold him by foul, 
deliberate, and infamous calumny, robbed of the 
profession he had so struggled to obtain, swindled 
from the flock he had so laboured to ameliorate, 
torn from the school where infant virtue vainly 
mourns an artificial orphanage, hunted from the 
home of his youth, from the friends of his heart, 
a hopeless, fortuneless, companionless exile, hang- 
ing, in some stranger scene, on the precarious pity 
of the few, whose charity might induce their com- 
passion to bestow, what this remorseless slanderer 
would compel their justice to withhold! I will 
not pursue this picture ; I will not detain you 
from the pleasure of your possible compensation ; 
for oh ! divine is the pleasure you are destined to 
experience : — dearer to your hearts shall be the 
sensation, than to your pride shall be the dignity 
it will give you. What ! though the people will 
hail the saviours of their pastor: what! though 
the priesthood will hallow the guardians of their 
brother ; though many a peasant heart will leap 
at your name, and many an infant eye will embalm 
their fame who restored to life, to station, to dig- 



o'mullan v. m'korkill. 143 

nity, to character, the venerable friend who taught 
their trembling tongues to lisp the rudiments of 
virtue and religion, still deafer than all will be 
the consciousness of the deed. Nor, believe me, 
countrymen, will it rest here. Oh no ! if there be. 
light in instinct, or truth in Revelation, believe me, 
at that awful hour, when you shall await the last 
inevitable verdict, the eye of your hope will not 
be the less bright, nor the agony of your ordeal 
the more acute, because you shall have, by this 
day's deed, redeemed the Almighty's persecuted 
Apostle, from the grasp of an insatiate malice — 
from the fang of a worse than Philistine perse- 
cution. 



SPEECH 



THE CASE OF CONNAGHTON v. DILLON : 

DELIVERED 

IN THE COUNTY COURT-HOUSE 
OF 

ROSCOMMON. 



My Lord and Gentlemen, 
TN this case I am one of the counsel for the 
Plaintiff, who has directed me to explain to you 
the wrongs for which, at your hands, he solicits 
reparation. It appears to mc a case which un- 
doubtedly merits much consideration, as well from 
the novelty of its appearance amongst us, as for the 
circumstances by which it is attended. Nor am I 
ashamed to say, that in my mind, not the least 
interesting of those circumstances is the poverty 
of the man who has made this appeal to me. 
Few are the consolations which soothe — hard 
must be the heart which does not feel for him. 
He is, Gentlemen, a man of lowly birth and humble 
station j with littLe wealth but from the labour of 

8 



SPEECH. 145 

his hands, with no rank but the integrity of his 
character, with no recreation but in the circle of his 
home, and with no ambition, but, when his days are 
full, to leave that little circle the inheritance of an 
honest name, and the treasure of a good man's 
memory. Far inferior, indeed, is he in this respect 
to his more fortunate antagonist. He, on the 
contrary, is amply either blessed or cursed with 
those qualifications which enable a man to adorn 
or disgrace the society in which he lives. He is, 
I understand, the representative of an honourable 
name, the relative of a distinguished family, the 
supposed heir to their virtues, the indisputable 
inheritor of their riches. He has been for many 
years a resident of your county, and has had the 
advantage of collecting round him all those re- 
collections, which, springing from the scenes of 
school-boy association, or from the more matured 
enjoyments of the man, crowd as it were uncon- 
sciously to the heart, and cling with a venial 
partiality to the companion and the friend. So 
impressed, in truth, has he been with these ad- 
vantages, that, surpassing the usual expenses of a 
trial, he has selected a tribunal where he vainly 
hopes such considerations will have weight, and 
where he well knows my client's humble rank can 
have no claim but that to which his miseries may 
entitle him. I am sure, however, he has wretchedly 
miscalculated. I know none of you personally ; 
but I have no doubt I am addressing men who 
will not prostrate their consciences before privilege 
or power ; who wiD remember that there is a 

L 



14b* SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

nobility above birth, and a wealth beyond riches ; 
who will feel that, as in the eye of that God to whose 
aid they have appealed, there is not the minutest 
difference between the rag and the robe, so in the 
contemplation of that law which constitutes our 
boast, guilt can have no protection, or innocence 
no tyrant ; men who will have pride in proving, 
that the noblest adage of our noble constitution is 
not an illusive shadow ; and that the peasant's 
cottage, roofed with straw and tenanted by poverty, 
stands as inviolate from all invasion as the mansion 
of the monarch. 

My client's name, Gentlemen, is Connaghton, 
and when I have given you his name you have 
almost all his history. To cultivate the path of 
honest industry comprises, in one line, " the short 
and simple annals of the poor." This has been 
his humble, but at the same time most honourable 
occupation. It matters little with what artificial 
nothings chance may distinguish the name, or 
decorate the person : the child of lowly life, with 
virtue for his handmaid, holds as proud a title 
as the highest — as rich an inheritance as the 
wealthiest. Well has the poet of your country- 
said — that 

" Princes or Lords may flourish or may fade, 
A breath can make them, as a breath has made ; 
But a brave peasantry, their country's pride, 
"When once destroy'd can never be supplied." 

For all the virtues which adorn that peasantry, 
which can render humble life respected, or give 
the highest stations their most permanent dis- 



CONNAGHTON V. DILLON. 1-17 

tinctions, my client stands conspicuous. An 
hundred years of sad vicissitude, and, in this land, 
often of strong temptation, have rolled away since 
the little farm on which he lives received his 
family ; and during all that time not one ac- 
cusation has disgraced, not one crime has sullied 
it. The same spot has seen his grandsire and his 
parent pass away from this world ; the village- 
memory records their worth, and the rustic tear 
hallows their resting-place. After all, when life's 
mockeries shall vanish from before us, and the 
heart that now beats in the proudest bosom here, 
shall moulder unconscious beneath its kindred clay, 
art cannot erect a nobler monument, or genius 
compose a purer panegyric. Such, Gentlemen, 
was almost the only inheritance with which my 
client entered the world. He did not disgrace it ; 
his youth, his manhood, his age, up to this moment, 
have passed without a blemish ; and he now stands 
confessedly the head of the little village in which 
he lives. About five-and-twenty years ago he 
married the sister of a highly respectable Roman 
Catholic clergyman, by whom he had a family of 
seven children, whom they educated in the prin- 
ciples of morality and religion, and who, until the 
defendant's interference, were the pride of their 
humble home, and the charm or the consolation 
of its vicissitudes. In their virtuous children the 
rejoicing parents felt their youth renewed, their 
age made happy : the days of labour became 
holidays in their smile ; and if the hand of affliction 
pressed on them, they looked upon their little 
'l 2 



148 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

ones, and their mourning ended. I cannot paint 
the glorious host of feelings ; the joy, the love, 
the hope, the pride, the blended paradise of rich 
emotions with which the God of nature fills the 
father's heart when he beholds his child in all its 
filial loveliness, when the vision of his infancy- 
rises as it were reanimate before him, and a divine 
vanity exaggerates every trifle into some myste- 
rious omen, which shall smooth his aged wrinkles, 
and make his grave a monument of honour ! / 
cannot describe them ; but, if there be a parent on 
the jury, he will comprehend me. It is stated to 
me, that of all his children there were none more 
likely to excite such feelings in the plaintiff than the 
unfortunate subject of the present action ; she was 
his favourite daughter, and she did not shame his 
preference. You shall find, most satisfactorily, 
that she was without stain or imputation ; an aid 
and a blessing to her parents, and an example to 
her younger sisters, who looked up to her for in- 
struction. She took a pleasure in assisting in the 
industry of their home ; and it was at a neigh- 
bouring market, where she went to dispose of the 
little produce of that industry, that she unhappily 
attracted the notice of the defendant. Indeed, 
such a situation was not without its interest, — a 
young female, in the bloom of her attractions, 
exerting her faculties in a parent's service, is an 
object lovely in the eye of God, and, one would 
suppose, estimable in the eye of mankind. Far 
different, however, were the sensations which she 
excited in the defendant. He saw her arrayed, as 



CONNACHTON V. DILLON. 149 

he confesses, in charms that enchanted him ; but 
her youth, her beauty, the smile of her innocence, 
and the piety of her toil, but inflamed a brutal and 
licentious lust, that should have blushed itself 
away in such a presence. What cared he for the 
consequences of his gratification? — There was 

" No honour, no relenting ruth, 

To paint the parents fondling o'er their child, 

Then show the ruin'd maid, and her distraction wild !" 

What thought he of the home he was to desolate ? 
What thought he of the happiness he was to 
plunder ? His sensual rapine paused not to con- 
template the speaking picture of the cottage-ruin, 
the blighted hope, the broken heart, the parent's 
agony, and, last and most withering in the woeful 
group, the wretched victim herself starving on the 
sin of a promiscuous prostitution, and at length 
perhaps, with her own hand, anticipating the more 
tedious murder of its diseases ! He need not, if 
I am instructed rightly, have tortured his fancy 
for the miserable consequences of hope bereft, and 
expectation plundered. Through no very distant 
vista, he might have seen the form of deserted 
loveliness weeping over the worthlessness of his 
worldly expiation, and warning him, that as there 
were cruelties no repentance could atone, so there 
were sufferings neither wealth, nor time, nor ab- 
sence could alleviate. * If his memory should fail 



* Mr. Phillips here alluded to a verdict of 5000/. obtained 
at the late Galway Assizes against the defendant, at the suit of 

L 3 



150 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

him, if he should deny the picture, no man can 
tell him half so efficiently as the venerable advocate 
he has so judiciously selected, that a case might 
arise, where, though the energy of native virtue 
should defy the spoliation of the person, still 
crushed affection might leave an infliction on the 
mind, perhaps less deadly, but certainly not less 
indelible. I turn from this subject with an indig- 
nation which tortures me into brevity ; I turn to the 
agents by which this contamination was effected, 

I almost blush to name them, yet they were 
worthy of their vocation. They were no other 
than a menial servant of Mr. Dillon ; and a base, 
abandoned, profligate ruffian, a brother-in-law of 
the devoted victim herself, whose bestial appetites 
he bribed into subserviency ! It does seem as if 
by such a selection he was determined to degrade 
the dignity of the master while he violated the 
finer impulses of the man, by not merely associating 
with his own servant, but by diverting the purest 
streams of social affinity into the vitiated sewer of 
his enjoyment. Seduced by such instruments into 
a low public-house at Athlone, this unhappy girl 
heard, without suspicion, their mercenary panegyric 
of the defendant, when, to her amazement, but no 
doubt, according to their previous arrangement, 
he entered and joined their company. I do con- 



Miss Wilson, a very beautiful and interesting young lady, for a 
breach of promise of marriage. Mr. Whitestone, who now- 
pleaded for Mr. Dillon, was Miss Wilson's advocate against him 
on the occasion alluded to. 



COXNAGHTON V. DILLOX. 13\ 

Jess to you, Gentlemen, when I first periled 
this passage in my brief, I flung ft from me with 
a contemptuous incredulity. What ! I exclaimed, 
as no doubt you are all ready to exclaim, can 
this be possible? Is it thus I am to find the 
educated youth of Ireland occupied ? Is this 
the employment of the miserable aristocracy that 
yet lingers in this devoted country ? Am I to 
find them, not in the pursuit of useful science, 
not in the encouragement of arts or agriculture, 
not in the relief of an impoverished tenantry, not 
in the proud march of an unsuccessful but not 
less sacred patriotism, not in the bright page of 
warlike immortality, dashing its iron crown from 
guilty greatness, or feeding freedom's laurel with 
the blood of the despot! — but am I to find them, 
amid drunken pandars and corrupted slaves, de- 
bauching the innocence of village-life, and even 
amid the stews of the tavern, collecting or creating 
the materials of the brothel ! Gentlemen, I am still 
unwilling to believe it, and, with all the sincerity of 
Mr. Dillon's advocate, I do entreat you to reject it 
altogether, if it be not substantiated by the unim- 
peachable corroboration of an oath. As I am in- 
structed, he did not, at this time, alarm his vic- 
tim by any direct communication of his purpose ; 
he saw that " she was good as she was fair," and 
that a premature disclosure would but alarm her 
virtue into an impossibility of violation. His sa- 
tellites, however, acted to admiration. They pro- 
duced some trifle which he had left for her dis- 
posal j they declared he had long felt for her a 
l i< 



15 c 2 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

sincere attachment; as a proof that it was pure, 
they urged the modesty with which, at a first inter- 
view, elevated above her as he was, he avoided 
its disclosure. When she pressed the madness 
of the expectation which could alone induce 
her to consent to his addresses, they assured 
her that though in the first instance such an event 
was impossible, still in time it was far from being 
improbable ; that many men from such motives 
forgot altogether the difference of station, that 
Mr. Dillon's own family had already proved every 
obstacle might yield to an all-powerful passion, 
and induce him to make her his wife, who had 
reposed an affectionate credulity on his honour! 
Such were the subtle artifices to which he 
stooped. Do not imagine, how r ever, that she 
yielded immediately and implicitly to their per- 
suasions ; I should scarcely wonder if she did. 
Every day shows us the rich, the powerful, and 
the educated, bowing before the spell of ambition, 
or avarice, or passion, to the sacrifice of their ho- 
nour, their country, and their souls : what wonder, 
then, if a poor, ignorant, peasant girl had at once 
sunk before the united potency of such temptations! 
But sue did not. Many and many a time the 
truths which had been inculcated by her adoring 
parents rose up in arms ; and it was not until va- 
rious interviews, and repeated artifices, and un- 
tiring efforts, that she yielded her faith, her fame, 
and her fortunes, to the disposal of her seducer. 
Alas, alas ! how little did she suppose that a mo- 
ment was to come when, every hope denounced, 



CONNAGHTON V. DILLON. 158 

and every expectation dashed, he was to fling her 
for a very subsistence on the charity or the crimes 
of the world she had renounced for him ! How 
little did she reflect that in her humble station, 
unsoiled and sinless, she might look down upon 
the elevation to which vice would raise her ! Yes, 
even were it a throne, I say she might look down 
on it. There is not on this earth a lovelier vision ; 
there is not for the skies a more angelic candidate 
than a young, modest maiden, robed in chastity ; 
no matter what its habitation, whether it be the 
palace or the hut : 

" So dear to Heaven is saintly Chastity, 
That when a soul is found sincerely so, 
A thousand liveried angels lackey her, 
Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt, 
And in clear dream and solemn vision 
Tell her of things that no gross ear can hear, 
Till oft converse with heavenly habitants 
Begins to cast a beam on the outward shape, 
The unpolluted temple of the mind, 
And turns it by degrees to the soul's essence, 
Till all be made immortal!" 

Such is the supreme power of chastity, as de- 
scribed by one of our divinest bards, and the plea- 
sure which I feel in the recitation of such a passage 
is not a little enhanced, by the pride that few 
countries more fully afford its exemplification than 
our own. Let foreign envy decry us as it will, 
Chastity is the instinct of the Irish Female : 
the pride of her talents, the power of her beauty, 
the splendour of her accomplishments, are but 
so many handmaids of this vestal virtue ; it adorns 
her in the court, it ennobles her in the cottage ; 



154f SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

whether she basks in prosperity or pines in sorrow, 
it clings about her like the diamond of the morning 
on the mountain flowret, trembling even in the ray 
that at once exhibits and inhales it! Rare in our 
land is the absence of this virtue. Thanks to the 
modesty that venerates ; thanks to the manliness 
that brands ancF avenges its violation. You have 
seen that it was by no common temptations even 
this humble villager yielded to seduction. 

I now come, Gentlemen, to another fact in the 
progress of this transaction, betraying, in my 
mind, as base a premeditation, and as low and as 
deliberate a deception as I ever heard of. While 
this wretched creature was in a kind Of counter- 
poise between her fear and her affection, struggling 
as well as she could between passion inflamed and 
virtue unextinguished,. Mr. Dillon, ardently avowing 
that such an event as separation was impossible, 
ardently avowing an eternal attachment, insisted 
upon perfecting an article which should place her 
above the reach of contingencies. Gentlemen, 
you shall see this document voluntarily executed 
by an educated and estated gentleman of your 
county. I know not how you will feel, but for my 
part I protest I am in a suspense of admiration 
between the virtue of the proposal and the magni- 
ficent prodigality of the provision. Listen to the 
article ; it is all in his own hand- writing : — " I pro- 
mise," says he, " to give Mary Connaghton the 
sum of ten pounds sterling per annum, when I 
part with her ; but if she, the said Mary, should at 
any time hereafter conduct herself improperly, or 



fONN'AGHTON V. DILI. OX. 155 

(mark this, Gentlemen) has done so before the draxv- 
ing oj'this article, I am not bound to pay the sum 
of ten pounds, and this article becomes null and 
void as if the same was never executed. John 
Dillon." There, Gentlemen, there is the notable 
and dignified document for you ! take it into your 
Jury box, for I know not how to comment on it. 
Oh, yes, I have heard of ambition urging men to 
crime — 1 have heard of love inflaming even to 
madness — I have read of passion rushing over law 
and religion to enjoyment ; but never, until this, 
did I see frozen avarice chilling the hot pulse of 
sensuality ; and desire pause, before its brutish 
draught, that it might add deceit to desolation ?- 
I need not tell you that having provided in the 
very execution of his article for its predetermined 
infringement ; that knowing, as he must, any sti- 
pulation for the purchase of vice to be invalid by 
our law; that having in the body of this article 
inserted a provision against that previous pollution 
which his prudent caprice might invent hereafter, 
but which his own conscience, her universal cha- 
racter, and even his own desire for her possession, 
all assured him did not exist at the time, I need 
not tell you that he now urges the invalidity of that 
instrument ; that he now presses that previous 
pollution ; that he refuses from his splendid income 
the pittance of ten pounds to the wretch he has 
ruined, and spurns her from him to pine beneath 
the reproaches of a parent's mercy, or linger out a 
living death in the charnel-houses of prostitution ! 
You see, Gentlemen, to what designs like these 



156 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

may lead a man. I have no doubt, if Mr. Dillon 
had given his heart fair play, had let his own 
nature gain a moment's ascendency, he would not 
have acted so; but there is something in guilt 
which infatuates its votaries forward : it may 
begin with a promise broken, it will end with 
the home depopulated. But there is something in a 
seducer of peculiar turpitude. I know of no cha- 
racter so vile, so detestable. He is the vilest of 
robbers, for he plunders happiness ; the worst of 
murderers, for he murders innocence ; his ap- 
petites are of the brute, his arts of the daemon ; 
the heart of the child and the corse of the parent 
are the foundations of the altar which he rears to 
a lust, whose fires are the fires of hell, and whose 
incense is the agony of virtue! I hope Mr. 
Dillon's advocate may prove that he does not de- 
serve to rank in such a class as this ; but if he does, 
I hope the infatuation inseparably connected with 
such proceedings may tempt him to deceive you 
through the same plea by which he has defrauded 
his miserable dupe. 

I dare him to attempt the defamation of a cha- 
racter, which, before his cruelties, never was even 
suspected. Happily, Gentlemen, happily for her- 
self, this wretched creature, thus cast upon the 
world, appealed to the parental refuge she had 
forfeited. I need not describe to you the parent's 
anguish at the heart-rending discovery. Gcd help 
the poor man when misfortune comes upon him ! 
How few are his resources ! how distant his conso- 
lation ! You must not forget, Gentlemen, that it is 

16 



CONNAGHTON V. DILLON. 157 

not the unfortunate victim herself who appeals to 
you for compensation. Her crimes, poor wretch, 
have outlawed her from retribution, and, however 
the temptations by which her erring nature was 
seduced, may procure an audience from the ear of 
mercy, the stern morality of earthly law refuses 
their interference. No, no ; it is the wretched 
parent who comes this day before you, — his aged 
locks withered by misfortune, and his heart broken 
by crimes of which he was unconscious. He re- 
sorts to this tribunal, in the language of the law, 
claiming the value of his daughter's servitude ; 
but let it not be thought that it is for her mere 
manual labours he solicits compensation. No, you 
are to compensate him for all he has suffered, for 
all he has to suffer, for feelings outraged, for gra- 
tifications plundered, for honest pride put to the 
blush, for the exiled endearments of his once 
happy home, for all those innumerable and in- 
stinctive ecstacies with which a virtuous daughter 
fills her father's heart, for which language is too 
poor to have a name, but of which nature is abun- 
dantly and richly eloquent ! Do not suppose I am 
endeavouring to influence you by the power of de- 
clamation. I am laying down to you the British 
law, as liberally expounded and solemnly adjudged. 
I speak the language of the English Lord Eldon, 
a judge of great experience and greater learning — 
(Mr. Phillips here cited several cases as decided 
by Lord Eldon.) — Such, Gentlemen, is the lan- 
guage of Lord Eldon. I speak also on the autho- 
rity of our own Lord Avonmore, a judge who 



158 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

illuminated the bench by his genius, endeared it 
by his suavity, and dignified it by his bold uncom- 
promising probity ; one of those rare men, who 
hid the thorns of law beneath the brightest flowers 
of literature, and, as it were, with the wand of an 
enchanter, changed a wilderness into a garden 1 I 
speak upon that high authority — but I speak on 
other authority paramount to all ! — on the autho- 
rity of nature rising up within the heart of man, 
and calling for vengeance upon such an outrage. 
God forbid, that in a case of this kind we were to 
grope our way through the ruins of antiquity, and 
blunder over statutes, and burrow through black 
letter, in search of an interpretation which Provi- 
dence has engraved in living letters on every hu- 
man heart. Yes ; if there be one amongst you 
blessed with a daughter, the smile of whose infancy 
still cheers your memory, and the promise of whose 
youth illuminates your hope, who has endeared the 
toils of your manhood, whom you look up to as 
the solace of your declining years, whose embrace 
alleviated the pang of separation, whose glowing 
welcome hailed your oft anticipated return — oh, 
if there be one amongst you, to whom those re- 
collections are dear, to whom those hopes are 
precious — let him only fancy that daughter torn 
from his caresses by a seducer's arts, and cast upon 
the world, robbed of her innocence, — and then 
let him ask his heart, " what money could reprise 
hrm!" 

The defendant, Gentlemen, cannot complain 
that I put it thus to you. If, in place of seducing, 






CONNAGHTON V. DILLON. 159 

he had assaulted this poor girl — if he had at- 
tempted by force what he has achieved by fraud, 
his life would have been the forfeit ; and yet how 
trifling in comparison would have been the parent's 
agony ! He has no right, then, to complain, if 
you should estimate this outrage at the price of 
his very existence ! I am told, indeed, this gentle- 
man entertains an opinion, prevalent enough in the 
age of a feudalism, as arrogant as it was barbarous, 
that the poor are only a species of property, to be 
treated according to interest or caprice ; and that 
wealth is at once a patent for crime, and an ex- 
emption from its consequences. Happily for this 
land, the day of such opinions has passed over it 
— the eye of a purer feeling and more profound 
philosophy now beholds riches but as one of the 
aids to virtue, and sees in oppressed poverty only 
an additional stimulus to increased protection. A 
generous heart cannot help feeling, that in cases 
of this kind the poverty of the injured is a dread- 
ful aggravation. If the rich suffer, they have much 
to console them ; but when a poor man loses the 
darling of his heart — the sole pleasure with which 
nature blessed him — how abject, how cureless is 
the despair of his destitution ! Believe me, Gentle- 
men, you have not only a solemn duty to perform, 
but you have an awful responsibility imposed upon 
you. You are this day, in some degree, trustees 
for the morality of the people — perhaps of the 
whole nation ; for depend upon it, if the sluices of 
immorality are once opened among the lower or- 
ders, the frightful tide, drifting upon its surface all 



160 SPEECH- 

that is dignified or dear, will soon rise even to the 
habitations of the highest. I feel, Gentlemen, I 
have discharged my duty — I am sure you will do 
your's. I repose my client with confidence in 
your hands ; and most fervently do I hope, that 
when evening shall find you at your happy fire- 
side, surrounded by the sacred circle of your chil- 
dren, you may not feel the heavy curse gnawing at 
your heart, of having let loose, unpunished, the 
prowler that may devour them. 



SPEECH 

OF 

MR. PHILLIPS 

IN 

THE CASE OF CREIGHTON v. TOWNSEND 

DELIVERED 

IN THE COURT OF COMMON PLEAS, 
DUBLIN. 



My Lord and Gentlemen, 
I" AM with my learned brethren counsel for the 
plaintiff. My friend Mr. Curran has told you 
the nature of the action. It has fallen to my lot 
to state more at large to you the aggression by 
which it has been occasioned. Believe me it is 
with no paltry affectation of under-valuing my very 
humble powers that I wish he had selected some 
more experienced, or at least less credulous advo- 
cate. I feel I cannot do my duty ; I am not fit 
to address you, I have incapacitated myself; I 
know not whether any of the calumnies which have 
,■=0 industriously anticipated this trial, have reached 



16°2 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

your ears ; but I do confess they did so wound 
and poison mine, that to satisfy my doubts I 
visited the house of misery and mourning, and the 
scene which set scepticism at rest, has set descrip- 
tion at defiance. Had I not yielded to those 
interested misrepresentations, I might from my 
brief have sketched the fact, and from my fancv 
drawn the consequences ; but as it is, reality 
rushes before my frighted memory, and silences 
the tongue and mocks the imagination. Believe 
me, Gentlemen, you are impannelled there upon 
no ordinary occasion ; nominally, indeed, you are 
to repair a private vrong, and it is a wrong as 
deadly as human wickedness can inflict — -as human 
weakness can endure ; a wrong which annihilates 
the hope of the parent and the happiness of the 
child ; which in one moment blights the fondest 
anticipations of the heart, and darkens the social 
hearth, and worse than depopulates the habitations 
of the happy! But, Gentlemen, high as it is, this 
is far from your exclusive duty. You are to do 
much more. You are to say whether an example 
of such transcendant turpitude is to stalk forth 
for public imitation — whether national morals are 
to have the law for their protection, or imported 
crime is to feed upon impunity — whether chastity 
and religion are still to be permitted to linger in 
this province, or it is to become one loathsome den 
of legalized prostitution — whether the sacred 
volume of the Gospel, and the venerable statutes 
of the law are still to be respected, or converted 
into a pedestal on which the mob and the military 



CREIGHTON V. TOWNJENU. lG3 

are to erect the idol of a drunken adoration. Gen- 
tlemen, these are the questions you are to try; 
hear the facts on which your decision must be 
founded. 

It is now about five-and-twenty years since the 
plaintiff* Mr. Creighton, commenced business as a 
slate merchant in the city of Dublin. His vocation 
was humble, it is true, but it was nevertheless 
honest j and though, unlike his opponent, the 
heights of ambition lay not before him, the patli 
of respectability did — he approved himself a good 
man and a respectable citizen. Arrived at the age 
of manhood, he sought not the gratification of its 
natural desires by adultery or seduction. For him 
the home of honesty was sacred ; for him the poor 
man's child was unassailed ; no domestic desolation 
mourned his enjoyment ; no anniversary of woe 
commemorated his achievements j from his own 
sphere of life naturally and honourably he selected 
a companion, whose beauty blessed his bed, and 
whose virtues consecrated his dwelling. Eleven 
lovely children blessed their union, the darlings of 
their heart, the delight of their evenings, and as 
they blindly anticipated, the prop and solace of 
their approaching age. Oh! sacred wedded love! 
how dear! how delightful! how divine are thy 
enjoyments ! Contentment crowns thy board, affec- 
tion glads thy fireside ; passion, chaste but ardent, 
modest but intense, sighs o'er thy couch, the atmo- 
sphere of paradise ! Surely, surely, if this conse- 
crated right can acquire from circumstances a fac- 
titious interest, 'tis when we see it cheering the 
m 2 



164 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

poor man's home, or shedding over the dwelling of 
misfortune the light of its warm and lovely con- 
solation. Unhappily, Gentlemen, it has that interest 
here. That capricious power which often dignifies 
the worthless hypocrite, as often wounds the in- 
dustrious and the honest. The late ruinous contest, 
having in its career confounded all the proportions 
of society, and with its last gasp sighed famine and 
misfortune on the world, has cast my industrious 
client, with too many of his companions, from 
competence to penury. Alas, alas, to him it left 
worse of its satellites behind it ; it left the invader 
even of his misery — the seducer of his sacred and 
unspotted innocent. Mysterious Providence ! was 
it not enough that sorrow robed the happy home 
in mourning — was it not enough that disappoint- 
ment preyed upon its loveliest prospects — was it 
not enough that its little inmates cried in vain for 
bread, and heard no answer but the poor father's 
sigh, and drank no sustenance but the wretched 
mother's tears ? Was this a time for passion, law- 
less, conscienceless, licentious passion, with its eye 
of lust, its heart of stone, its hand of rapine, to 
rush into the mournful sanctuary of misfortune, 
casting crime into the cup of woe, and rob the 
parents of their last wealth, their child, and rob 
the child of her only charm, her innocence ! ! 
That this has been done I am instructed we shall 
prove : what requital it deserves, Gentlemen, you 
must prove to mankind. 

The defendant's name I understand is Townsend. 
He is of an age when every generous blossom of 
13 



CREIGHTON V. TOWNSEND. 1 65 

the spring should breathe an infant freshness round 
his heart ; of a family which should inspire not 
only high but hereditary principles of honour ; of 
a profession whose very essence is a stainless chi- 
valry, and whose bought and bounden duty is the 
protection of the citizen. Such are the advantages 
with which he appears before you — fearful advan- 
tages, because they repel all possible suspicion ; 
but you will agree with me, most damning adver- 
saries, if it shall appear that the generous ardour 
of his youth was chilled — that the noble inspir- 
ation of his birth was spurned — that the lofty 
impulse of his profession was despised — and that 
all that could grace, or animate, or ennoble, was 
used to his own discredit and his fellow-creature's 
misery. 

It was upon the first of June last, that on the 
banks of the canal, near Portobello, Lieutenant 
Townsend first met the daughter of Mr. Creighton, 
a pretty, interesting girl, scarcely sixteen years of 
age. She was accompanied by her little sister, only 
four years old, with whom she was permitted to 
take a daily walk in that retired spot, the vicinity 
of her residence. The defendant was attracted by 
her appearance — he left his party, and attempted 
to converse with her ; she repelled his advances — 
he immediately seized her infant sister by the hand, 
whom he held as a kind of hostage for an intro- 
duction to his victim. A prepossessing appearance, 
a modesty of deportment apparently quite incom- 
patible with any evil design, gradually silenced her 
alarm, and she answered the common-place ques- 
M 3 



16*6 SPEECH I-N THE CASE OF 

tions with which, on her way home, he addressed 
her. Gentlemen, I admit it was an innocent im- 
prudence ; the rigid rules of matured morality 
should have repelled such communication ; yet, 
perhaps, judging even by that strict standard, you 
will rather condemn the familiarity of the intrusion 
in a designing adult than the facility of access in a 
creature of her age and her innocence. They thus 
separated, as she naturally supposed, to meet no 
more. Not such, however, was the determination 
of her destroyer. From that hour until her ruin, 
he scarcely ever lost sight of her — he followed 
her as a shadow — he way-laid her in her walks — 
he interrupted her in her avocations — he haunted 
the street of her residence ; if she refused to meet 
him, he paraded before her window at the hazard 
of exposing her first comparatively innocent im- 
prudence to her unconscious parents. How happy 
would it have been had she conquered the timidity, 
so natural to her age, and appealed at once to their 
pardon and their protection ! Gentlemen, this daily 
persecution continued for three months — for three 
successive months, by every art, by every per- 
suasion, by every appeal to her vanity and her 
passions, did he toil for the destruction of this un- 
fortunate young creature. I leave you to guess 
how many during that interval might have yielded 
to the blandishments of manner, the fascinations 
of youth, the rarely resisted temptations of oppor- 
tunity. For three long months she did resist them. 
She would have resisted them for ever but for an 
expedient which is without a model — but for an 



CREIGHTOX V. TOWNSEND. 1^7 

exploit which I trust in God will be without an 
imitation. Oh yes, he might have returned to 
his country, and did he but reflect, he would 
rather have rejoiced at the virtuous triumph of his 
victim, than mourned his own soul-redeeming de- 
feat ; he might have returned to his country, and 
told the cold-blooded libellers of this land that 
their speculations upon Irish chastity w T ere preju- 
diced and proofless ; that in the wreck of all else 
we had retained our honour ; that though the 
national luminary had descended for a season, the 
streaks of its loveliness still lingered on our horizon ; 
that the nurse of that genius which abroad had 
redeemed the name, and dignified the nature of 
man, was to be found at home in the spirit without 
a stain, and the purity without a suspicion. He 
might have told them truly that this did not result, 
as they would intimate, from the absence of passion 
or the want of civilisation ; that it was the com- 
bined consequence of education, of example, and 
of impulse ; and that, though in all the revelry of 
enjoyment, the fair floweret of the Irish soil ex- 
haled its fragrance and expanded its charms in the 
chaste and blessed beams of a virtuous affection, 
■still it shrunk with an instinctive sensitiveness 
from the gross pollution of an unconsecrated 
contact ! 

Gentlemen, the common artifices of the seducer 
failed ; the syren tones with which sensuality 
awakens appetite and lulls purity had wasted them- 
selves in air, and the intended victim, deaf to 
their fascination, moved along safe and untrans- 
M 4 



168 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

formed. He soon saw, that young as she was, the 
vulgar expedients of vice were ineffectual; that 
the attractions of a glittering exterior failed ; and 
that before she could be tempted to her sensual 
damnation, his tongue must learn, if not the words 
of wisdom, at least the speciousness of affected 
purity. He pretended an affection as virtuous as 
it was violent ; he called God to witness the since- 
rity of his declarations ; by all the vows which should 
for ever rivet the honourable, and could not fail 
to convince even the incredulous, he promised 
her marriage ; over and over again he invoked the 
eternal denunciation if he was perfidious. To her 
acknowledged want of fortune, his constant reply 
was, that he had an independence ; that all he 
wanted was beauty and virtue ; that he saw she had 
the one, that had proved she had the other. When 
she pleaded the obvious disparity of her birth, he 
answered that he was himself only the son of an 
English farmer ; that happiness was not the mono- 
poly of rank or riches ; that his parents would 
receive her as the child of their adoption ; that he 
would cherish her as the charm of his existence. 
Specious as it was, even this did not succeed ; she 
determined to await its avowal to those who had 
given her life, and who hoped to have made it im- 
maculate by the education they had bestowed and 
the example they had afforded. Some days after 
this he met her in her walks, for she could not pass 
her parental threshold without being intercepted. 
He asked where she was going — she said, a friend 
knowing her fondness for books had promised her 



CREIGHTON V. TOWNSEND. l6f 

the loan of some, and she was going to receive them. 
He told her he had abundance, that they were just 
at his home, that he hoped after what had passed 
she would feel no impropriety in accepting them. 
She was persuaded to accompany him. Arrived, 
however, at the door of his lodgings, she positively- 
refused to go any farther ; all his former artifices 
were redoubled; he called God to witness he con- 
sidered her as his wife, and her character as dear 
to him as that of one of his sisters ; he affected 
mortification at any suspicion of his purity ; he told 
her if she refused her confidence to his honourable 
affection, the little infant who accompanied her 
was an inviolable guarantee for her protection. 

Gentlemen, this wretched child did suffer her 
credulity to repose on his professions. Her theory 
taught her to respect the honour of a soldier ; 
her love repelled the imputation that debased its 
object ; and her youthful innocence rendered her 
as incredulous as she was unconscious of crimiua- 
lity. At first his behaviour corresponded with his 
professions ; he welcomed her to the home of which 
he hoped she would soon become the inseparable 
companion ; he painted the future joys of their 
domestic felicity, and dwelt with peculiar com- 
placency on some heraldic ornament which hung 
over his chimney-piece, and which, he said, was 
the armorial ensign of his family ! Oh ! my Lord, 
how well would it have been had he but retraced 
the fountain of that document ; had he recalled 
to mind the virtues it rewarded, the pure train 
of honours it associated, the line of spotless an- 



170 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

cestry it distinguished, the high ambition its be- 
quest inspired, the moral imitation it imperatively 
commanded ! But when guilt once kindles with- 
in the human heart, all that is noble in our nature 
becomes parched and arid ; the blush of modesty 
fades before its glare, the sighs of virtue fan its 
lurid flame, and every divine essence of our being 
but swells and exasperates its infernal conflagra- 
tion. 

Gentlemen, I will not disgust this audience ; I 
will not debase myself by any description of the 
scene that followed ; I will not detail the arts, the 
excitements, the promises, the pledges with which 
deliberate lust inflamed the passions, and finally 
overpowered the struggles of innocence and of youth. 
It is too much to know that tears could not ap- 
pease-— that misery could not affect — that the pre- 
sence and the prayers of an infant could not awe 
him ; and that the wretched victim, between the 
ardour of passion and the repose of love, sunk at 
at length, inflamed, exhausted, and confiding, be- 
neath the heartless grasp of an unsympathising 
sensuality. 

The appetite of the hour thus satiated, at a tem- 
poral, perhaps an eternal hazard, he dismissed the 
sisters to their unconscious parents, not, however, 
without extorting a promise, that on the ensuing 
night Miss Creighton would desert her home for 
ever for the arms of a fond, affectionate, and faith- 
ful husband. Faithful, alas ! but only to his appe- 
tites, he did seduce her from that '■ sacred home," 
to deeper guilt, to more deliberate cruelty. 



CREIGHTON V. TOWXSEND. 17 1 

After a suspense comparatively happy, her pa- 
rents became acquainted with her irrevocable ruin. 
The miserable mother, supported by the mere 
strength of desperation, rushed half phrenzied to 
the castle, where Mr. Townsend was on duty. 
" Give me back my child I" was all she could arti- 
culate. The parental ruin struck the spoiler 
almost speechless. The few dreadful words, " / 
have your child" withered her heart up with the 
horrid joy that death denied its mercy, that her 
daughter lived, but lived, alas, to infamy. She could 
neither speak nor hear ; she sunk down convulsed 
and powerless. As soon as she could recover to any 
thingof effort, naturally did she turn to theresidence 
of Mr. Townsend; his orders had anticipated her 
— the sentinel refused her entrance. She told her sad 
narration, she implored his pity; with the eloquence 
of grief she asked him, had he home, or wife, or 
children. " Oh, Holy Nature ! thou didst not plead 
in vain !" even the rude soldier's heart relented. 
He admitted her by stealth, and she once more 
held within her arms the darling hope of many an 
anxious hour; duped, desolate, degraded it was 
true — but still — but still " hei % child" Gentlemen, 
if the parental heart cannot suppose what followed, 
how little adequate am I to paint it. Home this 
wretched creature could not return ; a seducer's 
mandate and a father's anger equally forbade it. 
But she gave whatever consolation she was capa- 
ble ; she told the fatal tale of her undoing — the 
hopes, the promises, the studied specious arts that 
had seduced her ; and with a desperate credulity 



172 SPEECH JN THE CASE OF 

still watched the light that, glimmering in the dis- 
tant vista of her love, mocked her with hope, and 
was to leave her to the tempest. To all the pro- 
phecies of maternal anguish she would still reply, 
" Oh, no — in the eye of Heaven he is my hus- 
band ; he took me from my home, my happiness 
and you, but still he pledged to me a soldier's 
honour — but he assured me with a Christian's con- 
science ; for three long months I heard his vows 
of love; he is honourable and will not deceive ; he 
is human and cannot desert me." Hear, Gentle- 
men, hear, I beseech you, how this innocent con- 
fidence was returned. When her indignant father 
had resorted to Lord Forbes, the commander of the 
forces, and to the noble and learned head of this 
Court, both of whom received him with a sympathy 
that did them honour, Mr. Townsendsent a brother 
officer to inform her she must quit his residence 
and take lodgings. In vain she remonstrated, in vain 
she reminded him of her former purity, and of the 
promises that betrayed it. She was literally turned 
out at nightfall to find whatever refuge the God of 
the shelterless might provide for her. Deserted and 
disowned, how naturally did she turn to the once 
happy home, whose inmates she had disgraced, and 
whose protection she had forfeited ! how naturally 
did she think the once familiar and once welcome 
avenues looked frowning as she passed ! how natu- 
rally did she linger like a reposeless spectre round 
the memorials of her living happiness ! Her heart 
failed her : where a parent's smile had ever cheered 
her, she could not face the glance of shame, or 



CREIGHTON V. TOWNSEND. 173 

sorrow, or disdain. She returned to seek her se- 
ducer's pity even till the morning. Good God ! 
how can I disclose it ! — the very guard had orders 
to refuse her access j even by the rabble soldiery 
she was cast into the street, amid the night's dark 
horrors, the victim of her own credulity, the out- 
cast of another's crime, to seal her guilty woes 
with suicide, or lead a living death amid the tainted 
sepulchres of a promiscuous prostitution ! Far, far 
am I from sorry that it was so. Horrible beyond 
thought as is this aggravation, I only hear in it the 
voice of the Deity in thunder upon the crime. Yes, 
yes ; it is the present God arming the vicious agent 
against the vice, and terrifying from its conception 
by the turpitude to which it may lead. But what 
aggravation does seduction need! Vice is its 
essence, lust its end, hypocrisy its instrument, and 
innocence its victim. Must I detail its mise- 
ries ? Who depopulates the home of virtue, making 
the child an orphan, and the parent childless? 
Who w r rests its crutch from the tottering helpless- 
ness of piteous age ? Who wrings its happiness 
from the heart of youth ? Who shocks the vision of 
the public eye ? Who infects your very thorough- 
fares with disease, disgust, obscenity, and profane- 
ness ? Who pollutes the harmless scenes where 
modesty resorts for mirth, and toil for recreation, 
with sights that stain the pure and shock the sen- 
sitive ? Are these the phrases of an interested 
advocacy ? Is there one amongst you but has wit- 
nessed their verification? Is there one amongst 
you so fortunate, or so secluded, as not to have 



V$4> SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

wept over the wreck of health, and youth, and 
loveliness, and talent, the fatal trophies of the 
reducer's triumph — some form, perhaps, where 
every grace was squandered, and every beauty 
paused to waste its bloom, and every beam of mind 
and tone of melody poured their profusion on the 
public wonder ; all that a parent's prayer could 
ask, or lover's adoration fancy •, in whom even pol- 
lution looked so lovely, that virtue would have 
made her more than human ? Is there an epithet 
too vile for such a spoiler ? Is there a punish- 
men too severe for such depravity ? I know not 
upon what complaisance this English seducer may 
calculate from a jury of this country ; I know not, 
indeed, whether he may not think he does your 
wives and daughters some honour by their contami- 
nation. But I know well what reception he would 
experience from a jury of his own country. I 
know that in such general execration do they view 
this crime, they think no possible plea a palliation; 
no, not the mature age of the seduced ; not her 
previously protracted absence from her parents ; 
not a levity approaching almost to absolute guilt ; 
not an indiscretion in the mother, that bore every 
colour of connivance : and in this opinion they 
have been supported by all the venerable authori- 
ties with whom age, integrity, and learning have 
adorned the judgment-seat. 

Gentlemen, I come armed with these authorities. 
In the case of Tullidge against Wade, my Lord, it 
appeared the person seduced was thirty years of 
age, and long before absent from her home ; yet, 



CREIGHTON V. TOWNSEND. 1?-J 

<m a motion to set aside the verdict for excessive 
damages, what was the language of Chief Justice 
Wilmot P " I regret," said he, " that they were not 
greater ; though the plaintiff's loss did not amount 
to twenty shillings, the jury were right in giving 
ample damages, because such actions should be 
encouraged for example's sake." Justice Give 
wished they had given twice the sum, and in this 
opinion the whole Bench concurred. There was 
a case where the girl was of mature age, and living 
apart from her parents : here, the victim is almost 
a child, and was never for a moment separated 
from her home. Again, in the case of " Bennet 
against Alcot," on a similar motion, grounded on 
the apparently overwhelming fact, that the mother 
of the girl had actually sent the defendant into her 
daughter's bed-chamber, where the criminality oc- 
curred, Justice Buller declared, " he thought the 
parent's indiscretion no excuse for the defendant's 
culpability ;" and the verdict of 200/. damages was 
confirmed. There was a case of literal conni- 
vance : here, will they have the hardihood to hint 
even its suspicion ? You all must remember, Gen- 
tlemen, the case of our own countryman, Captain 
Gore, against whom, only the other day, an English 
jury gave a verdict of 1,500/. damages, though it 
was proved that the person alleged to have been 
seduced was herself the seducer, going even so far 
as to throw gravel up at the windows of the de- 
fendant ; yet Lord Ellenborough refused to disturb 
the verdict. Thus you may see I rest not on my 
own proofless and unsupported dictum. I rely 



17$ SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

upon grave decisions and venerable authorities — 
not only on the indignant denunciation of the mo- 
ment, but on the deliberate concurrence of the en- 
lightened and the dispassionate. I see my learned 
opponent smile. I tell him I would not care if the 
books were an absolute blank upon the subject. 
I would then make the human heart my authority ; 
I would appeal to the bosom of every man who 
hears me, whether such a crime should grow un- 
punished into a precedent; whether innocence 
should be made the subject of a brutal speculation ; 
whether the sacred seal of filial obedience, upon 
which the Almighty Parent has affixed his eternal 
fiat, should be violated by a blasphemous and sel- 
fish libertinism! 

Gentlemen, if the cases I have quoted, palli- 
ated as they were, have been humanely marked 
by ample damages, what should you give here where 
there is nothing to excuse — where there is every 
thing to aggravate! The seduction was delibe- 
rate, it was three months in progress, its victim 
was almost a child, it was committed under the 
most alluring promises, it was followed by a deed 

the most dreadful cruelty; but, above z. 
was the act of a man commissioned by his otai 
country, and paid by this, for the enforcement of 
the laws and the preservation of society. No man 
more respects than I do the well-earned reputation 
of the British army; 

" It is a school 
Where every principle tending to honour 
Is taught- if followed." 



CREIGHTON V. TOWNSEND. 1 77 

But in the name of that distinguished army, I here 
solemnly appeal against an act, which would blight 
its greenest laurels, and lay its trophies prostrate 
in the dust. Let them war, but be it not on do- 
mestic happiness; let them invade, but be their 
country's earths inviolable ; let them achieve a 
triumph wherever their banners fly, but be it not 
over morals, innocence, and virtue. I know not 
by what palliation the defendant means to mitigate 
this enormity; — will he plead her youth? it should 
have been her protection; — will he plead her levity? 
I deny the fact ; but even were it true, what is 
it to him ? what right has any man to speculate on 
the temperature of your wives and your daughters, 
that he may defile your bed, or desolate your habit- 
ation ? Will he plead poverty ? I never knew a 
seducer or an adulterer that did not. He should 
have considered that before. But is poverty 
an excuse for crime? Our law says, he who 
has not a purse to pay for it, must suffer for it in 
his person. It is a most wise declaration ; and for 
my part, I never hear such a person plead poverty, 
that my first emotion is not a thanksgiving, that 
Providence has denied, at least, the instrumentality 
of wealth to the accomplishment of his purposes. 
Gentlemen, I see you agree with me. I wave the 
topic ; and I again tell you, that if what I know 
will be his chief defence were true, it should avail 
him nothing. He had no right to speculate on 
this wretched creature's levity to ruin her, and 
still less to ruin her family. Remember, however, 
Gentlemen, that even had this wretched child 
been indiscreet, it is not in her name we ask for 

N 



178 SPEECH. 

reparation ; no, it is in the name of the parents 
her seducer has heart-broken ; it is in the name of 
the poor helpless family he has desolated ; it is in 
the name of that misery, whose sanctuary he has 
violated ; it is in the name of law, virtue and mo- 
rality ; it is in the name of that country whose fair 
fame foreign envy will make responsible for this 
crime ; it is in the name of nature's dearest, ten- 
derest sympathies ; it is in the name of all that gives 
your toil an object, and your ease a charm, and 
your age a hope — I ask from you the value of 
the poor man's child. 



SPEECH 



IN 

THE CASE OF BLAKE r. WILKINS 

DELIVERED 

W t THE COUNTY COURT-HOUSE, 

GALWAY. 



May it please Your Lordship, 

rpHE Plaintiffs Counsel tell me, Gentlemen, 
most unexpectedly, that they have closed 
his case, and it becomes my duty to state to you 
that of the Defendant. The nature of this ac- 
tion you have already heard. It is one which, 
in my mind, ought to be very seldom brought, 
and very sparingly encouraged. It is founded 
on circumstances of the most extreme delicacy, 
and it is intended to visit with penal consequences 
the non-observance of an engagement, which is 
of the most paramount importance to society, and 
which of all others, perhaps, ought to be the most 
unbiassed, — an engagement which, if it be volun 
tary, judicious, and disinterested, generally pro- 
duces the happiest effects; but which, if it be 
either unsuitable or compulsory, engenders not 
only individual misery, but consequences univer- 
sally pernicious. There are few contracts between 
n 2 



180 



SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 



human beings which should be more deliberate 
than that of marriage. I admit it should be very 
cautiously promised, but, even when promised, I 
am far from conceding that it should invariably 
be performed j a thousand circumstances may form 
an impediment, change of fortune may render it 
imprudent, change of affection may make it 
culpable. The very party to whom the law gives 
the privilege of complaint has perhaps the most rea- 
son to be grateful, — grateful that its happiness has 
not been surrendered to caprice, grateful that Reli- 
gion has not constrained an unwilling acquiescence, 
or made an unavoidable desertion doubly criminal, 
grateful that an offspring has not been sacrificed to 
the indelicate and ungenerous enforcement, grate- 
ful that an innocent secret disinclination did not 
too late evince itself in an irresistible and irreme- 
diable disgust. You will agree with me, however, 
that if there exists any excuse for such an action, 
it is on the side of the female, because every fe- 
male object being more exclusively domestic, such 
a disappointment is more severe in its visitation ; 
because the very circumstance concentrating their 
feelings renders them naturally more sensitive of a 
wound; because their best treasure, their repu- 
tation, may have suffered from the intercourse ; 
because their chances of reparation are less, and 
their habitual seclusion makes them feel it more ; 
because there is something in the desertion of 
their helplessness which almost immerges the ille- 
gality in the unmanliness of the abandonment. 
However, if a man seeks to enforce this engage- 
ment, every one feels some indelicacy attached to 



BLAKE V. WILKINS. 181 

the requisition. 1 do not enquire into the compa- 
rative justness of the reasoning, but does not every- 
one feel that there appears some meanness in forcing 
a female into an alliance ? Is it not almost saying, 
" I will expose to public shame the credulity on 
which I practised, or you must pay to me in mo- 
nies numbered, the profits of that heartless spe- 
culation ; I have gambled with your affections, I 
have secured your bond, I will extort the penalty 
either from your purse or your reputation!" I 
put a case to you where the circumstances are 
reciprocal, where age, fortune, situation, are the 
same, where there is no disparity of years to make 
the supposition ludicrous, where there is no dis- 
parity of fortune to render it suspicious. Let us 
see whether the present action can be so pal- 
liated, or whether it does not exhibit a picture 
of fraud and avarice, and meanness and hypocrisy, 
so laughable, that it is almost impossible to criticise 
it, and yet so debasing, that human pride almost 
forbids its ridicule. 

It has been left to me to defend my unfortunate 
old client from the double battery of Love and of 
Law, which at the age of sixty-five has so unex- 
pectedly opened on her. Oh, Gentlemen, how 
vain-glorious is the boast of beauty ! How misap- 
prehended have been the charms of youth, if years 
and wrinkles can thus despoil their conquests, and 
depopulate the navy of its prowess, and beguile 
the bar of its eloquence ! How mistaken were all 
the amatory poets from Anacreon downwards, who 
preferred the bloom of the rose and the thrill of 
n 3 



182 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

the nightingale, to the saffron hide and dulcet 
treble of sixty-five. ! Even our own sweet bard has 
had the folly to declare, that 

" He once had heard tell of an amorous youth 
Who was caught in his grandmother's bed ; 
But owns he had ne'er such a liquorish tooth, 
As to wish to be there in his stead." 

Royal wisdom has said, that we live in a "New 
^Era." The reign of old women has commenced, 
and if Johanna Southcote converts England to her 
creed, why should not Ireland, less pious perhaps, 
but at least equally passionate, kneel before the 
shrine of the irresistible Widow Wilkin s» It ap- 
pears, Gentlemen, to have been her happy fate 
to have subdued particularly the death-dealing 
professions. Indeed, in the love-episodes of the 
heathen mythology, Mars and Venus were con- 
sidered as inseparable. I know not whether any 
of you have ever seen a very beautiful print re- 
presenting the fatal glory of Quebec, and the last 
moments of its immortal conqueror — if so, you 
must have observed the figure of the Staff physi- 
cian, in whose arms the hero is expiring — that 
identical personage, my Lord, was the happy swain, 
who, forty or fifty years ago, received the reward 
of his valour and his skill in the virgin hand of my 
venerable client ! The Doctor lived something more 
than a century, during a great part of which Mrs. 
Wilkins was his companion — alas, Gentlemen, 
long as he lived, he lived not long enough to be- 
hold her beauty — 

" That beauty, like the Aloe flower, 

But bloom'd and blossom'd at fourscore." 



BLAKE V. WILKINS. 183 

He was, however, so far fascinated as to bequeath 
to her the legacies of his patients, when lie found 
he was predoomed to follow them. To this cir- 
cumstance, very far be it from me to hint, that 
Mrs. W. is indebted for any of her attractions. 
Rich, however, she undoubtedly was, and rich she 
would still as undoubtedly have continued, had it 
not been for her intercourse with the family of the 
Plaintiff. I do not impute it as a crime to them that 
they happened to be necessitous, but I do impute it 
as both criminal and ungrateful, that after having 
lived on the generosity of their friend, after having 
literally exhausted her most prodigal liberality, 
they should drag her infirmities before the public 
gaze, vainly supposing that they could hide their 
own contemptible avarice in the more prominent 
exposure of her melancholy dotage. The father 
of the Plaintiff, it cannot be unknown to you, was 
for many years in the most indigent situation. 
Perhaps it is not a matter of concealment either, 
that he found in Mrs. Wilkins a generous bene- 
factress. She assisted and supported him, until at 
last his increasing necessities reduced him to take 
refuge in an act of insolvency. During their inti- 
macy, frequent allusion was made to a son whom 
Mrs. Wilkins had never seen since he was a child, 
and who had risen to a lieutenancy in the navy, 
under the patronage of their relative, Sir Benjamin 
Bloomfield. In a parent's panegyric, the gallant 
lieutenant was of course all that even hope could 
picture. Young, gay, heroic, and disinterested, 
the pride of the navy, the prop of the country, 

N 4 



184 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

independent as the gale that wafted, and bounteous 
as the wave that bore him. I am afraid that it is 
rather an anti-climax to tell you after this, that he 
is the present Plaintiff. The eloquence of Mrs. 
Blake was not exclusively confined to her enco- 
miums on the lieutenant. She diverged at times 
into an episode on the matrimonial felicities, painted 
the joy of passion and delights of love, and ob- 
scurely hinted that Hymen, with his torch, had an 
exact personification in her son Peter bearing a 
match-light in His Majesty's ship the Hydra ! — 
While these contrivances were practising on 
Mrs. Wilkins, a bye-plot was got up on board the 
Hydra, and Mr. Blake returned to his mourning 
country, influenced, as he says, by his partiality for 
the Defendant, but in reality compelled by ill 
health and disappointments, added, perhaps, to 
his mother's very absurd and avaricious specu- 
lations. What a loss the navy had of him, and 
what a loss he had of the navy ! Alas, Gentlemen, 
he could not resist his affection for a female he never 
saw. Almighty love eclipsed the glories of ambi- 
tion — Trafalgar and St. Vincent flitted from his 
memory — he gave up all for woman, as Mark 
Antony did before him, and, like the Cupid in 
Hudibras, he 



-took his stand 



Upon a Widow's jointure land — 
His tender sigh and trickling tear 
Long'd for five hundred pounds a year; 
And languishing desires were fond 
Of Statute, Mortgage, Bill, and Bond !" 



BLAKE V. WILKIVs. 1&5 

— Oh, Gentlemen, only imagine him on the lakes 
of North America ! Alike to him the varieties of 
season or the vicissitudes of warfare. One sove- 
reign image monopolises his sensibilities. Does the 
storm rage? the Widow Wilkins outsighs the whirl- 
wind. Is the Ocean calm ? its mirror shows him 
the lovely Widow Wilkins. Is the battle won ? he 
thins his laurel that the Widow Wilkins may inter- 
weave her myrtles. Does the broadside thunder ? 
he invokes the Widow Wilkins ! 

" A sivect little Cherub she sits up aloft 
To keep watch for the life of poor Peter !' 

— Alas, how much he is to be pitied ! How amply 
he should be recompensed ! Who but must mourn 
his sublime, disinterested, sweet-souled patriotism ! 
Who but must sympathise with his pure, ardent, 
generous affection ! — affection too confiding to re- 
quire an interview/ — affection too warm to wait 
even for an introduction! Indeed, his Amanda 
herself seemed to think his love was most desirable 
at a distance, for at the very first visit after his re- 
turn he was refused admittance. His captivating 
charmer was then sick and nurse-tended at her 
brother's house, after a winter's confinement, re- 
flecting, most likely, rather on her funeral than her 
wedding. Mrs. Blake's avarice instantly took the 
alarm, and she wrote the letter, which I shall now 
proceed to read to you. 

[Mr. Vandeleur. — My Lord, unwilling as I am 
to interrupt a statement which seems to create so 
universal a sensation, still I hope Your Lordship 



186 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

will restrain Mr. Phillips from reading a letter 
which cannot hereafter be read in evidence. 

Mr. O'Connell rose for the purpose of sup- 
porting the propriety of the course pursued by the 
Defendant's Counsel, when] 

Mr. Phillips resumed — My Lord, although it 
is utterly impossible for the Learned Gentleman to 
say, in what manner hereafter this letter might be 
made evidence, still my case is too strong to require 
any cavilling upon such trifles. I am content to 
save the public time and wave the perusal of the 
letter. However, they have now given its sup- 
pression an importance which perhaps its produc- 
tion could not have procured for it. You see, 
Gentlemen, what a case they have when they insist 
on the withholding of the documents which origi- 
nated with themselves. I accede to their very po- 
litic interference. I grant them, since they entreat 
it, the mercy of my silence. Certain it is, however, 
that a letter was received from Mrs. Blake ; and 
that almost immediately after its receipt, Miss 
Blake intruded herself at Brownville, where 
Mrs. Wilkin s was — remained two days— lamented 
bitterly her not having appeared to the lieu- 
tenant, when he called to visit her- — said that her 
poor mother had set her heart on an alliance — 
that she was sure, dear woman, a disappointment 
would be the death of her ; in short, that there was 
no alternative but the tomb or the altar ! To all 
this Mrs. Wilkins only replied, how totally ignorant 
the parties most interested were of each other, and 
that were she even inclined to connect herself with 



BLAKF, V. WILKINS. 18? 

a stranger (poor old fool !) the debts in which her 
generosity to the family had already involved her, 
formed, at least for the present, an insurmountable 
impediment. This was not sufficient. In less than 
a week, the indefatigable Miss Blake returned to 
the charge, actually armed with an old family-bond 
to pay off the incumbrances, and a renewed repre- 
sentation of the mother's suspense and the brother's 
desperation. You will not. fail to observe, Gentlemen, 
that while the female conspirators were thus at work, 
the lover himself had never even seen the object of his 
idolatry. Like the maniac in the farce, he fell in love 
with the picture of his grandmother. Like a prince 
of the blood, he was willing to w r oo and to be wed- 
ded by proay. For the gratification of his avarice, 
he was contented to embrace age, disease, infirmity, 
and widowhood — to bind his youthful passions to 
the carcase for which the grave was opening — to 
feed by anticipation on the uncold corpse, and cheat 
the worm of its reversionary corruption. Educated 
in a profession proverbially generous, he offered to 
barter every joy for money ! Born in a country ar- 
dent to a fault, he advertised his happiness to the 
highest bidder ! and he now solicits an honourable 
jury to become the panders to this heartless cupi- 
dity ! Thus beset, harassed, conspired against, their 
miserable victim entered into the contract you have 
heard — a contract conceived in meanness, extorted 
by fraud, and sought to be enforced by the most 
profligate conspiracy. Trace it through every stage 
of its progress, in its origin, its means, its effects — 
from the parent contriving it through the sacrifice 



188 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

of her son, and forwarding it through the indelicate 
instrumentality of her daughter, down to the son 
himself unblushingly acceding to the atrocious com- 
bination by which age was to be betrayed and youth 
degraded, and the odious union of decrepit lust and 
precocious avarice blasphemously consecrated by the 
solemnities of Religion ! Is this the example which 
as parents you would sanction ? Is this the principle 
you would adopt yourselves ? Have you never wit- 
nessed the misery of an unmatched marriage ? Have 
you never worshipped the bliss by which it has been 
hallowed, when its torch, kindled at affection's altar, 
gives the noon of life its warmth and its lustre, and 
blesses its evening with a more chastened, but not 
less lovely illumination ? Are you prepared to say, 
that this rite of heaven, revered by each country, 
cherished by each sex, the solemnity of every 
Church and the Sacrament of one, shall be pro- 
faned into the ceremonial of an obscene and soul- 
degrading avarice ! 

No sooner was this contract, the device of their 
covetousness and the evidence of their shame, 
swindled from the wretched object of this conspi- 
racy, than its motive became apparent ; they avow- 
ed themselves the keepers of their melancholy vic- 
tim; they Vatched her movements ; they dictated 
her actions ; they forbade all intercourse with her 
own brother ; they duped her into accepting bills, 
and let her be arrested for the amount. They ex- 
ercised the most cruel and capricious tyranny upon 
her, now menacing her with the publication of her 
follies, and now with the still more horrible enf brce-r 



BLAKE V. WILKINS. 189 

ment of a contract that thus betrayed its anticipated 
inflictions ! Can you imagine a more disgusting ex- 
hibition of how weak and how worthless human 
nature may be, than this scene exposes ? On the 
one hand, a combination of sex and age, disregard- 
ing the most sacred obligations, and trampling on 
the most tender ties, from a mean greediness of 
lucre, that neither honour or gratitude or nature 
could appease, " Lucri bonus est odor eocrequa- 
tibet." On the other hand, the poor shrivelled re- 
lic, of what once was health, and youth, and ani- 
mation, sought to be embraced in its infection, and 
caressed in its infirmity — crawled over and corrupt- 
ed by the human reptiles, before death had shovel- 
led it to the less odious and more natural vermin of 
the grave ! ! What an object for the speculations 
of avarice ! What an angel for the idolatry of youth ! 
Gentlemen, when this miserable dupe to her own 
doting vanity and the vice of others, saw how she 
was treated — when she found herself controlled by 
the mother, beset by the daughter, beggared by the 
father, and held by the son as a kind of windfall, 
that, too rotten to keep its hold, had fallen at his 
feet to be squeezed and trampled ; when she saw 
the intercourse of her relatives prohibited, the most 
trifling remembrances of her ancient friendship de- 
nied, the very exercise of her habitual charity de- 
nounced ; when she saw that all she was worth was 
to be surrendered to a family confiscation, and that 
she was herself to be gibbetted in the chains of wed- 
lock, an example to every superannuated dotard, 
upon whose plunder the ravens of the world might 



190 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

calculate, she came to the wisest determination of" 
her life, and decided that her fortune should remain 
at her own disposal. Acting upon this decision, 
she wrote to Mr. Blake, complaining of the cruelty 
with which she had been treated, desiring the res- 
toration of the contract of which she had been 
duped, and declaring, as the only means of securing 
respect, her final determination as to the control over 
her property. To this letter, addressed to the son, 
a verbal answer (mark the conspiracy) was returned 
from the mother, withholding all consent, unless the 
property was settled on her family, but withholding 
the contract at the same time. The wretched old 
woman could not sustain this conflict. She was 
taken seriously ill, confined for many months in her 
brother's house, from whom she was so cruelly 
sought to be separated, until the debts in which she 
was involved and a recommended change of scene 
transferred her to Dublin. There she was received 
with the utmost kindness by her relative, Mr. Mac 
Namara, to whom she confided the delicacy and 
distress of her situation. That gentleman, acting 
at once as her agent and her friend, instantly re- 
paired to Galway, where he had an interview with 
Mr. Blake. This was long before the commence- 
ment of any action. A conversation took place be- 
tween them on the subject, which must, in my mind, 
set the present action at rest altogether ; because it 
must show that the non-performance of the contract 
originated entirely with the plaintiff himself. Mr. 
Mac Namara enquired, whether it was not true, that 
Mr. Blake's own family declined any connexion, 



BLAKE V. WILKINS. 191 

unless Mrs. Wilkins consented to settle on them the 
entire of her property ? Mr. Blake replied it was. 
Mr. Mac Namara rejoined, that her contract did 
not bind her to any such extent. " No," replied 
Mr. Blake, " I know it does not ; however, tell Mrs. 
Wilkins that I understand she has about 580/. a 
year, and I will be content to settle the odd 80/. on 
her by way of pocket money" Here, of course, the 
conversation ended, which Mr. Mac Namara de- 
tailed, as he was desired, to Mrs. Wilkins, who re- 
jected it with the disdain, which, I hope, it will 
excite in every honourable mind. A topic, how- 
ever, arose during the interview, which unfolds the 
motives and illustrates the mind of Mr. Blake more 
than any observation which I can make on it. As 
one of the inducements to the projected marriage, 
he actually proposed the prospect of a 50/. annuity 
as an officer's widow's pension, to which she would 
be entitled in the event of his decease ! I will not 
stop to remark on the delicacy of this inducement — 
I will not dwell on the ridicule of the anticipation — 
I will not advert to the glaring dotage on which he 
speculated, when he could seriously hold out to a 
woman of her years the prospect of such an impro- 
bable survivorship. But I do ask you, of what 
materials must the man be composed who could 
thus debase the national liberality ! What ! was 
the recompense of that lofty heroism which has al- 
most appropriated to the British navy the monopo- 
ly of maritime renown — was that grateful offering 
which a weeping country pours into the lap of its 
patriot's widow, and into the cradle of its warrior's 



192 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

orphan — was that generous consolation with which 
a nation's gratitude cheers the last moments of her 
dying hero, by the portraiture of his children sus- 
tained and ennobled by the legacy of his achieve- 
ments, to be thus deliberately perverted into the 
bribe of a base, reluctant, unnatural prostitution ! 
Oh ! I know of nothing to parallel the self-abase- 
ment of such a deed, except the audacity that re- 
quires an honourable Jury to abet it. The follow- 
ing letter from Mr. Anthony Martin, Mr. Blake's 
attorney, unfolded the future plans of this unfeel- 
ing conspiracy. Perhaps the Gentlemen would 
wish also to cushion this document ? They do not. 
Then I shall read it. The Letter is addressed to 
Mrs. Wilkins. 

" Madam, " Galway, Jan 9. I8I7. 

" I have been applied to professionally by Lieute- 
nant Peter Blake to take proceedings against you on 
rather an unpleasant occasion ; but, from every let- 
ter of your's, and other documents, together with 
the material and irreparable loss Mr. Blake has sus- 
tained in his professional prospects, by means of 
your proposals to him, makes it indispensably neces- 
sary for him to get remuneration from you. Under 
these circumstances, I am obliged to say, that I 
have his directions to take immediate proceedings 
against you, unless he is in some measure compen- 
sated for your breach of contract and promise to 
him. I should feel happy that you would save me 
the necessity of acting professionally by settling the 
business [You see, Gentlemen, money, money, 



BLAKE V. WILKENS. 19-S 

money, runs through the whole amour], and not 
suffer it to come to a public investigation, particu- 
larly, as I conceive from the legal advice Mr. Blake 
has got, together with all I have seen, it will ulti- 
mately terminate most honourably to his advantage, 
and to your 'pecuniary loss. 

" I have the honour to remain, 
" Madam, 
" Your very humble Servant, 

" Anthony Martin." 

Indeed, I think Mr. Anthony Martin is mis- 
taken. Indeed, I think no twelve men upon their 
oaths will say (even admitting the truth of all he 
asserts) that it was honourable for a British officer 
to abandon the navy on such a speculation — to 
desert so noble a profession — to forfeit the ambi- 
tion it ought to have associated — the rank to which 
it leads — the glory it may confer, for the purpose 
of extorting from an old woman he never saw the 
purchase-money of his degradation ! But I rescue 
the Plaintiff from this disgraceful imputation. I 
cannot believe that a member of a profession not 
less remarkable for the valour than the generosity 
of its spirit — a profession as proverbial for its pro- 
fusion in the harbour as for the prodigality of its 
life-blood on the wave — a profession ever willing to 
fling^ money to the winds, and only anxious that 
they should waft through the world its immortal 
banner crimsoned xvith the record of a thousand vic- 
tories! No, no, Gentlemen; notwithstanding the 
great authority of Mr. Anthony Martin, I cannot: 



1<H SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

readily believe that any man could be found to 
make the high honour of this noble service a base, 
mercenary, sullied pander to the prostitution of his 
youth ! The fact is, that increasing ill health, and 
the improbability of promotion, combined to induce 
his retirement on half-pay. You will find this con- 
firmed by the date of his resignation, which was 
immediately after the battle of Waterloo, which 
settled (no matter how) the destinies of Europe. 
His constitution was declining, his advancement 
was annihilated, and, as a forlorn hope, he bom- 
barded the Widow Wilkins ! 

" War thoughts had left their places vacant; 
In their room came, thronging, soft and amorous desires ; 
All telling him how fair — Young Hero was." 

He first, Gentlemen, attacked her fortune with 
herself, through the artillery of the Church, and 
having failed in that, he now attacks her fortune 
without herself, through the assistance of the law. 
However, if I am instructed rightly, he has nobody 
but himself to blame for his disappointment. Ob- 
serve, I do not vouch for the authenticity of this 
fact ; but I do certainly assure you, that Mrs. Wil- 
kins was persuaded of it. You know the pro- 
verbial frailty of our nature. The gallant Lieute- 
nant was not free from it ! Perhaps you imagine 
that some younger, or, according to his taste, some 
older fair one, weaned him from the widow. In- 
deed they did not. He had no heart to lose, and 
yet (can you solve the paradox ?) his infirmity was 
love. As the Poet says — 

"Love — still — Love." . 



BLAKE V. WILKINS. 19'5 

No, it was not to Venus, it was to Bacchus, he 
sacrificed. With an eastern idolatry he com- 
menced at day-light, and so persevering was his 
piety till the shades of night, that when he was 
not on his knees, he could scarcely be said to be on 
his legs ! When I came to this passage, I could 
not avoid involuntarily exclaiming, Oh, Peter, 
Peter, whether it be in liquor or in love — 
" None but thyself can be thy parallel !" — 

I see by your smiling, Gentlemen, that you cor- 
rect my error. I perceive your classic memories 
recurring to, perhaps, the only prototype to be 
found in history. I beg his pardon. I should not 
have overlooked 

the immortal Captain Wattle, 



Who was all for love and — a little for the bottle." 

Ardent as our fair ones have been announced to 
be, they do not prefer a flame that is so exclusively 
spiritual. Widow Wilkins, no doubt, did not 
choose to be singular. In the words of the bard, 
and, my Lord, I perceive you excuse my dwelling 
so much on the authority of the muses, because 
really on this occasion the minstrel seems to have 
combined the powers of poetry w r ith the spirit of 
prophecy — in the very words of the Bard, 

" He asked her, would she marry him — Widow Wilkins 

answer 'd, No — 
Then said he, I'll to the Ocean rock, I'm ready for the 

slaughter, 
Oh! — I'll shoot at my sad image, as its sighing in the 

water — 
Only think of Widow Wilkins, saying — Go — Peter — 

Go !" — 



196 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

But, Gentlemen, let us try to be serious, and 
seriously give me leave to ask you, on what grounds 
does he solicit your verdict? Is it for the loss of 
his profession ? Does he deserve compensation if 
he abandoned it for such a purpose — if he de- 
serted at once his duty and his country to trepan 
the weakness of a wealthy dotard ? But did he 
(base as the pretence is), did he do so? Is there 
nothing to cast any suspicion on the pretext? 
nothing in the aspect of public affairs? in the uni- 
versal peace ? in the uncertainty of being put in 
commission? in the downright impossibility of 
Advancement ? Nothing to make you suspect that 
ne imputes as a contrivance, what was the manifest 
result of an accidental contingency? Does he 
claim on the ground of sacrificed affection? Oh, 
Gentlemen, only fancy what lie has lost — if it were 
but the blessed raptures of the bridal night! Do not 
suppose I am going to describe it ; I shall leave it 
to the Learned Counsel he has selected to compose 
his epithalamium. I shall not exhibit the venerable 
trembler — at once a relic and a relict; with a 
grace for every year and a Cupid in every wrinkle 
— affecting to shrink from the flame of his impa- 
tience, and fanning it with the ambrosial sigh of 
sixty-five!! I cannot paint the fierce meridian 
transports of the honeymoon, gradually melting 
into a more chastened and permanent affection — 
every nine months adding a link to the chain of 
their delicate embraces, until, too soon, Death's 
broadside lays the Lieutenant low, consoling, how- 
ever, his patriarchal charmer, (old enough at the 



BLAKE V. WILKINSi 197 

time to be the last wife of Methusalem) with a fifty 
pound annuity, being the balance of his glory against 
His Majesty's Ship, the Hydra!! 

Give me leave to ask you, Is this one of the 
cases, to meet which, this very rare and delicate 
action was intended ? Is this a case where a reci- 
procity of circumstances, of affection, or of years, 
throw even a shade of rationality over the con- 
tract? Do not imagine I mean to insinuate, that 
under no circumstances ought such a proceeding 
to be adopted. Do not imagine, though I say 
this action belongs more naturally to a female, its 
adoption can never be justified by one of the other 
sex. Without any great violence to my imagina- 
tion, I can suppose a man in the very spring of 
life, when his sensibilities are most acute, and his 
passions most ardent, attaching himself to some 
object, young, lovely, talented, and accomplished, 
concentrating, as he thought, every charm of per- 
sonal perfection, and in whom those charms were 
only heightened by the modesty that veiled them ; 
perhaps his preference was encouraged ; his affec- 
tion returned ; his very sigh echoed until he was 
conscious of his existence but by the soul-creating 
sympathy — until the world seemed but the residence 
of his love, and that love the principle that gave it 
animation — until, before the smile of her affection, 
the whole spectral train of sorrow vanished, and 
this world of woe, with all its cares and miseries 
and crimes, brightened as by enchantment into 
anticipated ^paradise ! ! K might happen that this 
divine affection might be crushed, and that hea» 



198 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

venly vision wither into air at the hell-engendered 
pestilence of parental avarice, leaving youth and 
health, and worth and happiness, a sacrifice to its 
unnatural and mercenary caprices. Far am I from 
saying, that such a case would not call for expia- 
tion, particularly where the punishment fell upon 
the very vice in which the ruin had originated. 
Yet even there perhaps an honourable mind would 
rather despise the mean, unmerited desertion. 
Oh, I am sure a sensitive mind would rather droop 
uncomplaining into the grave, than solicit the 
mockery of a worldly compensation ! But in the 
case before you, is there the slightest ground for 
supposing any affection ? Do you believe, if any 
accident bereft the Defendant of her fortune, that 
her persecutor would be likely to retain his con- 
stancy ? Do you believe that the marriage thus 
sought to be enforced, was one likely to promote 
morality and virtue ? Do you believe that those 
delicious fruits by which the struggles of social 
life are sweetened, and the anxieties of parental 
care alleviated, were ever once anticipated? Do 
you think that such an union could .exhibit those 
reciprocities of love and endearments by which this 
tender rite should be consecrated and recommend- 
ed ? Do you not rather believe that it originated 
in avarice — that it was promoted by conspiracy 
— and that it would not perhaps have lingered 
through some months of crime, and then termi- 
nated in an heartless and disgusting abandonment ? 
Gentlemen, these are the questions which you 
will discuss in your Jury-room. I am not afraid of 



BLAKE V. WILKINS. 199 

your decision. Remember I ask you for no miti- 
gation of damages. Nothing less than your ver- 
dict will satisfy me. By that verdict you will 
sustain the dignity of your sex — by that verdict 
you will uphold the honour of the national charac- 
ter — by that verdict you will assure, not only the 
immense multitude of both sexes that thus so un- 
usually crowds around you, but the whole rising 
generation of your country, That marriage can 

NEVER BE ATTENDED WITH HONOUR OR BLESSED 
WITH HAPPINESS, IF IT HAS NOT ITS ORIGIN IN 

mutual affection. I surrender with confidence 
my case to your decision. 

[The Damages were laid at 5000/., and the Plaintiff's 
Counsel were, in the end, contented to withdraw a Juror, 
and let him pay his own Costs.] 



o 4< 



CHARACTER 

OF 

NAPOLEON BUONAPARTE, 

DOWN TO THE PERIOD OF 

HIS EXILE TO ELBA. 



XTE is fallen! 

We may now pause before that splendid pro- 
digy, which towered amongst us like some ancient 
ruin, whose frown terrified the glance its magni- 
ficence attracted. 

Grand, gloomy, and peculiar, he sat upon the 
throne, a sceptered hermit, wrapt in the solitude 
of his own originality. 

A mind bold, independent, and decisive — a 
will, despotic in its dictates — an energy that 
distanced expedition, and a conscience pliable to 
every touch of interest, marked the outline of 
this extraordinary character — the most extra- 



CHARACTER OF N. BUONAPARTE. 201 

ordinary, perhaps, that, in the annals of this world, 
ever rose, or reigned, or fell. 

Flung into life, in the midst of a Revolution, 
that quickened every energy of a people who ac- 
knowledged no superior, he commenced his 
course, a stranger by birth, and a scholar by 
charity ! 

With no friend but his sword, and no fortune 
but his talents, he rushed into the lists where 
rank, and wealth, and genius had arrayed them- 
selves, and competition fled from him as from the 
glance of destiny. He knew no motive but in- 
terest — he acknowledged no criterion but success 
— he worshipped no God but ambition, and with 
an eastern devotion he knelt at the shrine of his 
idolatry. Subsidiary to this, there was no creed 
that he did not profess, there was no opinion that 
he did not promulgate; in the hope of a dynasty, 
he upheld the crescent ; for the sake of a divorce, 
he bowed before the Cross: the orphan of St. 
Louis, he became the adopted child of the Re- 
public : and with a parricidal ingratitude, on the 
ruins both of the throne and the tribune, he 
reared the throne of his despotism. 

A professed Catholic, he imprisoned the Pope ; 
a pretended patriot, he impoverished the country ; 
and in the name of Brutus*, he grasped without 



* In his hypocritical cant after Liberty, in the commence- 
ment of the Revolution, he assumed the name of Brutus 

Proh Pudor ! 



202 CHARACTER OF N. BUONAPARTE. 

remorse, and wore without shame, the diadem of 
the Caesars ! 

Through this pantomime of his policy, Fortune 
played the clown to his caprices. At his touch, 
crowns crumbled, beggars reigned, systems va- 
nished, the wildest theories took the colour of his 
whim, and all that was venerable, and all that was 
novel, changed places with the rapidity of a 
drama. Even apparent defeat assumed the appear- 
ance of victory — his flight from Egypt confirmed 
his destiny — ruin itself only elevated him to 
empire. 

But if his fortune was great, his genius was 
transcendent; decision flashed upon his councils; 
and it was the same to decide and to perform. To 
inferior intellects, his combinations appeared per- 
fectly impossible, his plans perfectly impracti- 
cable ; but, in his hands, simplicity marked their 
developement, and success vindicated their adop- 
tion. 

His person partook the character of his mind— - 
if the one never yielded in the cabinet, the other 
never bent in the field. 

Nature had no obstacles that he did not sur- 
mount — space no opposition that he did not spurn; 
and whether amic- Alpine rocks, Arabian sands, or 
polar snows, he seemed proof against peril, and 
empowered with ubiquity! The whole continent 
of Europe trembled at beholding the audacity of 
his designs, and the miracle of their execution. 
Scepticism bowed to the prodigies of his perform- 
ance ; romance assumed the air of history ; nor 



CHARACTER OF X. BUONAPARTE. 208 

was there aught too incredible for belief, or too fan- 
ciful for expectation, when the world saw a subal- 
tern of Corsica waving his imperial flag over her 
most ancient capitals. All the visions of antiquity 
became common places in his contemplation ; king? 
were his people — nations were his outposts ; and 
he disposed of courts, and crowns, and camps, and 
churches, and cabinets, as if they were the titular 
dignitaries of the chess-board ! 

Amid all these changes he stood immutable a> 
adamant. It mattered little whether in the field 
or the drawing-room — with the mob or the levee 
— wearing the jacobin bonnet or the iron crown — 
banishing a Bragaiiza, or espousing a Hapsburgh — 
dictating peace on a raft to the czar of Russia, or 
contemplating defeat at the gallows of Leipsic — - 
he was still the same military despot ! 

Cradled in the camp, he was to the last hour the 
darling of the army ; and whether in the camp or 
the cabinet he never forsook a friend or forgot a 
favour. Of all his soldiers, not one abandoned him, 
till affection was useless, and their first stipulation 
was for the safety of their favourite. 

They knew well that if he was lavish of them, he 
was prodigal of himself; and that if he exposed 
them to peril, he repaid them with plunder. For 
the soldier, he subsidised every people ; to the peo- 
ple he made even pride pay tribute. The victori- 
ous veteran glittered with his gains ; and the capi- 
tal, gorgeous with the spoils of art, became the mi- 
niature metropolis of the universe. In this wonder- 
ful combination, his affectation of literature must 



§04 CHARACTER OF N. BUONAPARTE. 

not be omitted. The gaoler of the press, he af- 
fected the patronage of letters — the proscriber of 
books, he encouraged philosophy — - the persecu- 
tor of authors, and the murderer of printers, he 
yet pretended to the protection of learning ! — the 
assassin of Palm, the silencer of De Stael, and the 
denouncer of Kotzebue, he was the friend of 
David, the benefactor of De Lille, and sent his 
academic prize to the philosopher of England.* 
- Such a medley of contradictions, and at the same 
time such an individual consistency, were never 
united in the same character. A Royalist — a Re- 
publican and an Emperor— a Mahometan — a Ca- 
tholic and a patron of the Synagogue — a Subaltern 
and a Sovereign — a Traitor and a Tyrant — a 
Christian and an Infidel —~ he was, through all his 
vicissitudes, the same stern, impatient, inflexible 
original- — the same mysterious incomprehensible 
self — the man without a model, and without a 
shadow. 

His fall, like his life, baffled all speculation. In 
short, his whole history was like a dream to the 
world, and no man can tell how or why he was 
awakened from the reverie. 

Such is a faint and feeble picture of Napoleon 
Buonaparte, the first (and it is to be hoped the last) 
Emperor of the French. 

That he has done much evil there is little doubt ; 
that he has been the origin of much good, there is 



* Sir Humphry Davy was transmitted the first prize of the 
Academy of Sciences. 



CHARACTER OF N. BUONAPARTE. 205 

just as little. Through his means, intentional or 
not, Spain, Portugal, and France have arisen to 
the blessings of a Free Constitution ; Superstition 
has found her grave in the ruins of the Inquisi- 
tion* ; and the Feudal system, with its whole train 
ot % tyrannic satellites, has fled for ever. Kings 
may learn from him that their safest study, as well 
as their noblest, is the interest of the people ; the 
people are taught by him that there is no despotism 
so stupendous against which they have not a re- 
source; and to those who would rise upon the ruins 
of both, he is a living lesson that if ambition can 
raise them from the lowest station, it can also pros- 
trate them from' the highest. 



* What melancholy reflections does not this sentence awaken ! 
But three years have elapsed since it was written, and in that 
short space all the good effected by Napoleon has been erased 
by the Legitimates, and the most questionable parts of his cha- 
racter badly imitated ! — His Successors want nothing but his 
Genius, 



I HE END. 



Primed by A.Strahan, 

Printerf-Streit, I ondon. 



ERRATA. 

Page viii. Preface line 5. from bott. for " Burke," r. Busbe. 

Pags 16. line 4. from bott. for " learn the alphabet," r. learn the rudimenii 



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